Comparing interventions to motivate work-site collection of home-generated recyclables

Compared the efficacy of eight different intervention strategies to increase the work-site delivery of employees' home-generated recyclables. The interventions incorporated appeals, reciprocity, goals plus feedback, and raffles. Results indicated that relatively few employees participated during any phase of the 25-week program. Raffles of prizes donated by community businesses were the only effective intervention, motivating substantial deliveries of aluminum cans. This suggests that low-cost, impersonal interventions targeting employees' delivery of recyclables to work are not effective. Reasons for the low participation rates are discussed as well as suggestions for improving future corporate-based recycling programs. This report is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation research, supervised by the second author, and conducted at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Parts of the research were presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, Georgia. We thank the other members of the dissertation committee for their helpful input, specifically, W. David Conn, Jack W. Finney, Thomas H. Ollendick, and Richard A. Winett.