The Geography of Litter - Behaviour Observations

Despite a universal aversion to litter, it is predicted that 62% of the UK population actively drops litter (Keep Britain Tidy, 2013), yet only 20% of the population will admit to it (DEFRA, 2018). This raises the question that, if the public, academics and government officials are aware of litter, actively fighting it and employing best available science in their efforts, why does rubbish continue to accumulate in public spaces? To explore this, a series of covert behaviour observation studies were run to quantify methods of waste disposal in England. Data included within is raw output of observations where behaviours are categorised and coded. Code is available in the Metadata tab.

尽管普遍存在对垃圾的厌恶情绪，但据预测，英国人口中有62%的人会主动丢弃垃圾（Keep Britain Tidy，2013年），然而只有20%的人会承认这一点（DEFRA，2018年）。这引发了一个问题，即如果公众、学者和政府官员都意识到垃圾问题，积极采取行动并运用最佳可用科学方法来支持他们的努力，为何垃圾仍然在公共空间中不断堆积？为了探究这一问题，进行了一系列隐蔽行为观察研究，以量化英格兰的垃圾处理方法。数据集包含了对观察行为的分类和编码的原始输出。编码信息可在元数据标签页中找到。