Rommel, Jens
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Cigarette littering in public spaces is an environmental and aesthetic problem. Broken windows theory posits that visible signs of anti-social behavior such as littering create the perception of a social norm in built environments. Cigarette butts on the ground then encourage people to drop theirs as well. We test this theory on benches of a university campus in a field experiment with two treatments: (1) a clean environment with no cigarette butts on the ground and (2) a dirty environment with 25 cigarette butts on the ground. Our outcome variable is the number of additional cigarette butts on the ground after two hours. We find a small effect of approximately 0.5 butts less per 2-hour period on clean grounds. Increased cleaning efforts can thus reduce littering, but the effect is probably too small to justify additional cleaning costs.
Keywords
broken windows theory; sustainable urban environments; Berlin; Germany; public cleaning; built environment
Published in
Environmental research communications
2020, volume: 2, number: 9, article number: 091002
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities
UKÄ Subject classification
Economics
Human Geography
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/abb6da
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107375