Open Collections

CIRS Common Kitchen Study

University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

The CIRS kitchen space is routinely left uncleaned, despite having signs within the kitchen space telling inhabitants to do so. To address this problem, we tested the relationship between wording of signs in 3 common kitchens of the CIRS building at UBC, and CIRS inhabitants’ behaviors and attitudes towards leaving their dishes in the sink. We used pre and post surveys to measure out participant’s attitudes towards the space, and then observed CIRS inhabitants’ behaviors with the original signs, and then after a week, changed the wording of the signs to make them selfish-appeal/funny/moral-positive for the experimental conditions. Our study suggests (based on survey results) that in general, people do not feel responsible for the cleanliness of the CIRS common kitchens, it should be noted however that these responses could have been influenced by response biases within the survey. Changing the original signage, was also ineffective at the CIRS inhabitant’s behaviors. This effect could be due to observation bias and random variance, and could also be a product of limited observation time. For future research regarding the CIRS kitchen, we suggest testing other versions or aspects of the signs, such as sizing, color, font, and placement which may be more effective for changing people’s attitudes. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Text

UBC Social Ecological Economic Development Studies (SEEDS) Student Report; University of British Columbia. PSYC 321

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0343518

Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/