Motivations and behaviors that support recycling

Abstract This paper proposes that recycling researchers should pay attention to both attitudes towards recycling and the processes involved in recycling (recyclers' phenomenal experiences and organizing strategies). As predicted by Sansone and colleagues' model of how people induce themselves to engage in necessary but boring tasks, people who had reasons to persist at recycling (that is, who held strong prorecycling attitudes or had a social orientation towards recycling) were more likely to redefine recycling so as to emphasize its pleasures or the sense of satisfaction they gained from contributing to the environment. These people were also more likely to have developed a way of organizing recycling in their homes, to report few interferences with recycling, and—most important—to recycle on both short- and long-term bases. In accord with the model, people who became better recyclers by Time 2 had had stronger prorecycling attitudes at Time 1 than people who remained poor recyclers. Our results are consistent with the view that people who make a valued but uninteresting task more phenomenally interesting and more manageable are more likely to continue at the task. Sansone and colleagues' model provides a useful way to look at recycling and also suggests a new way that attitudes may be linked to behavior—via cognitive transformation of behavior.