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

• Rommel, Jens

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable


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