IBSS-Ex: Integrating Social Science and Systems Methodologies for Sustainability: Promoting Appropriate Waste-Disposal Practices in Low-Income Neighborhoods

IBSS-Ex：整合社会科学和可持续发展系统方法：在低收入社区推广适当的废物处理做法

• 批准号: 1416873
• 负责人: Peter Winch
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: Johns Hopkins University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-01 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1416873&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IBSS; Ex; Integrating; Social; Science

This interdisciplinary research project will explore the potential for a new approach to reduce trash accumulation and promote recycling in low-income urban neighborhoods. The project will demonstrate how different social science methods can be integrated to provide insights and answers useful in urban sustainability management. The investigators will bring together perspectives and approaches from behavioral science, decision and management sciences; econometrics and behavioral economics; and the social determinants of health. The project will provide new insights regarding the factors that influence waste-creation and -disposal practices, and it will assess the potential for different kinds of approaches to reduce litter, increase recycling, and improve urban environmental characteristics. The project will be conducted in low-income neighborhoods in the city of Baltimore, but it will provide new theoretical insights in a diverse range of other locales, and it will inform the development of programs and policies designed to promote urban neighborhood quality and sustainability. The investigators will work in collaboration with neighborhood residents, community associations, environmental organizations and city agencies to investigate the causes and to pilot test and evaluate solutions to the problem of urban trash accumulation. The project will provide valuable education and training opportunities for graduate students, and it will involve students from a number of high schools that have science programs with a health focus and with large numbers of students underrepresented in science and engineering in the U.S.This project will build on a pilot study conducted in early 2014 that identified four key factors contributing to the accumulation of solid waste in neighborhoods: (1) high turnover of tenants in rental properties; (2) landlords who do not provide trash containers, information about trash collection procedures, or access to the back alley to tenants; (3) difficulties faced by sanitation code enforcement officials given current laws; and (4) drug dealers and users who encourage trash accumulation because it helps conceal their activities from law enforcement officials. The investigators will integrate empirical and theoretical modeling methods from different social science fields to assess social and physical factors influencing waste creation and disposal practices and create measurement tools for evaluation of factors affecting waste creation and disposal. They will develop and test intervention packages designed to improve household and community waste management, and they will employ a systems-analysis approach for the evaluation of strategies. Four types of empirical analyses will inform the parameterization of the socio-physical decision sciences model. The first will be analyses of historical data for broad relationships between waste policies and the amounts of waste and litter. These data will provide a useful baseline and insights on correlations with policies but will not provide the fine-grained resolution needed for models of relationships between influences and choices. The second and third types will be laboratory experiments and field studies to generate individual and household-level data under more controlled conditions to identify relationships that are more causal in nature. The fourth will be questionnaire studies addressing attitudes towards proper and improper disposal methods, which will help identify which interventions will be received most positively by the public under given circumstances, with an emphasis placed on design features that can make a large difference in intervention effectiveness. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.

这一跨学科研究项目将探索一种新方法的潜力，以减少垃圾堆积，促进低收入城市社区的回收利用。该项目将展示如何整合不同的社会科学方法，以提供对城市可持续发展管理有用的见解和答案。研究人员将汇集来自行为科学、决策和管理科学、计量经济学和行为经济学以及健康的社会决定因素的视角和方法。该项目将为影响废物产生和处理做法的因素提供新的见解，并将评估减少垃圾、增加回收和改善城市环境特征的各种方法的潜力。该项目将在巴尔的摩市的低收入社区进行，但它将在其他不同地区提供新的理论见解，并将为旨在促进城市社区质量和可持续发展的项目和政策的发展提供信息。调查人员将与社区居民、社区协会、环境组织和城市机构合作，调查原因，并对城市垃圾堆积问题的解决方案进行试点测试和评估。该项目将为研究生提供宝贵的教育和培训机会，它将涉及一些高中的学生，这些高中的学生有以健康为重点的科学项目，而且美国的理工科学生人数较少。该项目将建立在2014年初进行的一项试点研究的基础上，该研究确定了导致社区固体废物堆积的四个关键因素：(1)租户在出租物业中的高周转率；(2)房东不提供垃圾桶、垃圾收集程序的信息或进入租户的后巷；(3)鉴于现行法律，环卫法规执法官员面临的困难；以及(4)鼓励垃圾堆积的毒贩和吸毒者，因为这有助于向执法人员隐瞒他们的活动。研究人员将结合不同社会科学领域的经验和理论建模方法，评估影响废物产生和处置做法的社会和物理因素，并创建衡量工具，评估影响废物产生和处置的因素。他们将开发和测试旨在改善家庭和社区废物管理的干预方案，并将采用系统分析方法来评估战略。四种类型的经验分析将为社会物理决策科学模型的参数化提供信息。第一项是对历史数据的分析，以了解废物政策与废物和垃圾数量之间的广泛关系。这些数据将提供有用的基线和对政策相关性的洞察，但不会提供影响和选择之间的关系模型所需的细粒度解决方案。第二类和第三类将是实验室实验和实地研究，以在更受控制的条件下产生个人和家庭层面的数据，以确定本质上更具因果关系。第四项是问卷研究，探讨对适当和不适当的处理方法的态度，这将有助于确定在特定情况下公众最积极地接受哪些干预措施，重点放在可以对干预效果产生重大影响的设计特点上。该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究(IBSS)竞赛得到支持。