Andrea Lockerbie explores the role of psychology in driving behaviour change and the behavioural science techniques used in effective interventions.

We know that policy, infrastructure and technology are critical parts of the puzzle in the quest to get more people to waste less and recycle more. But lasting impact often also depends on how people think, feel and act – doesn’t it? If so, how can we influence behaviour and what do we need to consider? 

David Hall, executive director of Behaviour Change, a subsidiary of WRAP, explains that a classic mistake, when planning a campaign, is to assume that attitudes alone drive behaviour – and that trying to change a person’s attitudes will guarantee changed behaviour.

While he says that this approach isn’t necessarily doomed to failure, it’s one that he describes as ‘problematic’.

It’s a natural assumption that the reason people do something, is because of what they think, but Hall says that there are other factors at play – three main ones, in particular. “Probably the single biggest one is ease – we are far more likely to do something if it’s easy, than if it’s difficult.” 

Next, is motivation. Hall explains: “Motivation isn’t just about thinking it’s important, it’s about what other stuff might get in the way [of you doing something].”

For example, eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (‘5-a-day’) is something that people widely believe is important, but this belief alone clearly isn’t enough to make people act on it, because government data shows that only 17% of us consume the daily recommended amount. 

The third key factor is what Hall calls ‘right time, right place’ which is about reminding people at the point of action.

Evidence shows that simple interventions like stickers on bin lids to prompt behaviours or adding bin hangers to the bins of those who have not presented food waste, are very effective.

“Probably the biggest single effective intervention there is, is just putting a sticker on people’s bins saying, ‘no food waste’,” he adds.

A similar approach has proved successful with a trial that set out to encourage more people to recycle plastic shower gel bottles from their bathrooms. WRAP worked with Boots to design a prominent sticker for the front of shower gel bottles, nudging people to recycle these frequently binned bathroom items.

In the randomised control trial, 91% of the people with a sticker on their bottle recycled it, compared to 86% of the people in the control group with no sticker. It’s a simple intervention, with scope to be applied in other areas.

Four-step process

Dominic Ridley-Moy, founder of the Behaviour Change Network, who works with councils to apply behavioural insights to areas including recycling, has developed his own behavioural framework process.

He explains: “Changing recycling behaviour is a four-step process: define the behaviour, examine the barriers, choose the right interventions and communications, and test what works.

“Step one is all about defining the behaviour you want to change – spending time clarifying the problem and why it matters.

“Next, identify the barriers that stop people taking action, whether that’s recycling more of the right things, using food waste caddies for the first time, or preventing fly-tipping.

“Step three is about selecting the right mix of service changes and methods of communications that genuinely drive action. And the final step is about measuring success – did your behavioural goals meet your outcomes?”

It was while working for Havering Council as its Campaigns and Marketing Manager, that Ridley-Moy tried applying behavioural science principles, initially with small scale trials, and then a larger experiment on its garden waste renewals.

Each year the council wrote to 20,000 residents asking them to renew their garden waste bin by either phone, online or post. His goal was to achieve a renewal rate of 20% online – and he set out to re-design the letter incorporating the principles of ease, attractiveness, social norms, and a timely prompt. 

He made the option for online renewal more prominent on the first page of the letter; tested and re-tested the online renewal process with small groups to make sure it was as easy as possible; clearly explained the process, with the wording of the letter tested on small groups beforehand; and used graphics and images to draw people’s attention based on Royal Mail’s eye-tracker research. 

As a result of the changes, 46% of people renewed online, and the success led to the council looking at how the principles could be applied to other areas.

Knowledge and social norms

With recycling, knowledge is also important – because people need to know what they can and can’t recycle.

“There are a surprisingly large number of confusing items,” Hall says, “and when you ask people, they’ll say the biggest reason why they don’t recycle is because they don’t know what can and can’t be recycled – which is a slight exaggeration perhaps. But there are items that people are confused about, so there’s still work to be done in terms of improving people’s knowledge.” 

Using social norms – the fact that people are more likely to do something if they feel that other people do it too – is a technique that has been proven to work well for recycling.

“If you have a sense that most other people are doing it, you are far more inclined to do it,” Hall explains.

There is also evidence that telling people, for example, that ‘most people around you are recycling food waste’ has a positive effect in encouraging others to do the same.

On the flip side, if you feel that other people don’t care about recycling – such as seeing lots of contamination in communal recycling bins – it can lead to you thinking there is no value in doing it. 

Over the years, the Recycle Now campaign has used the social norms technique, to show that recycling is an activity that lots of people do. There have been some seemingly subtle shifts.

In the past, a tagline might have been ‘Recycle for London’ whereas now it is ‘London Recycles’. Hall explains that the wording change “supports that idea of lots and lots of people doing it, whereas the previous tagline implied you were doing it for somebody else’s benefit”.

Getting specific

Now that the nation understands the general message about why we need to recycle, the Recycle Week campaign has switched to more specific behaviours that it wants people to adopt.

This year’s campaign, which ran 22-28 September, builds on the 2024 campaign, with the focus on the need to ‘rescue’ and recycle eight items that are commonly put in the residual waste bin: perfume bottles, aerosols, trigger sprays, yoghurt pots, toilet roll tubes, toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles and foil. 

Hall explains that personification of the items – adding big eyes and turning them into characters – along with stories about why you should rescue them from the bin, is designed to help people feel an emotional connection to them, in a similar way to kids’ films, such as Inside Out or Toy Story.

This, in turn, should increase the motivation to recycle them. He adds that personification ‘is not my prescription for every piece of recycling communication’ but is working well for the campaign.

Last year’s Recycle Week had strong results: the missed capture rate of target items dropped from 70% to 64%. Another technique it used was the ‘chunking’ of information, breaking it down into simple steps rather than having long reams of information. 

But is it important to keep campaigns fun as opposed to serious? “As a rule, yes, because we live in a world where we’re surrounded by entertainment. So, for example, our big [Recycle Week] campaign this year is on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube,” Hall explains.

“If you think about what people are doing on those platforms, if you are hit with an incredibly boring bit of communication, they’re going to desperately try and skip over that to something else, whereas if you engage with them in a way that fits with the environment they’re in, hopefully they find it entertaining.”

The power of feedback

Another effective intervention, that has only been trialled on a small scale, is giving people feedback on how successfully they recycle. In 2020, WRAP/Behaviour Change trialled the ‘Not Sure Box’ with Dorset council. Residents were given an extra box in which to put any items they weren’t sure were recyclable. 

Council officers went ahead of the crew to sort through the boxes, putting any recyclables in the recycling bin, and leaving the non-recyclable items with feedback on how to correctly dispose of them.

This gave people direct, personalised feedback, and resulted in contamination reducing by 45%. It’s a short-term intervention that can lead to long-term results, and Kent council is now looking into how it could replicate and scale this up.

Final thought

We all know that humans can be complex, but based on what we know, a good place to start with any behaviour change campaign is to make it as easy as possible, remove any barriers that might get in the way of that, and nudge at the right time.

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