(Viewed 333 times since July 2007)

The Psychology Of Dropping Litter

I have always been fascinated by people's behaviour while dropping litter. It is something I see a great deal of while walking around of certain parts London. In people's minds, it seems that putting their discarded rubbish onto a shelf above ground level, such as a window ledge, is somehow much better than dropping it on the floor.

I suppose that in their minds, they are making it more convenient for street cleaners to pick up their discarded wrappers, whereas probably they would be better tossing it into the road for the automatic machines to sweep up.

Another oddity is putting items into similarly shaped holes. For example, beer cans into the top of traffic cones or hollow steel pipes in scaffolding. This is amazingly common.

Today, I saw the most bizarre event yet. A discarded broken umbrella had been left on the street, and I saw a litterer shame-facedly put a food wrapper into the folds of the umbrella, out of site and leap into his nearby car! I suppose in his mind, it was no longer visible, and like with small children, it doesn't exist if it's out of sight.

It turns out that studies have been made into this bizarre behaviour. Generally it seems that if there is litter already present, people will drop more. Men tend to drop more than woman and young people more than old. See the links below for more.

Related links:

http://tinyurl.com/5v3lc8
http://tinyurl.com/5pbwlz