Practice-based spill-over effects: evidence from Calgary’s municipal food and yard waste recycling pilot

Wonneck, L. and Hobson, Kersty ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4200-9081 2017. Practice-based spill-over effects: evidence from Calgary’s municipal food and yard waste recycling pilot. Canadian Geographer / Geographie Canadien 61 (3) , pp. 415-427. 10.1111/cag.12391

Preview

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (331kB) | Preview

Abstract

Analyzing the spillover effects of environmental interventions is vital for understanding how they contribute to broader societal transitions towards or away from sustainability. Past research analyzing spillover effects has produced inconsistent results, which we argue is in part due to its assumption that social life consists of rational and autonomous individuals. By contrast, we place practices as central units of inquiry, arguing that social practice theory opens up promising alternative sets of theoretical and methodological possibilities for analyzing spillover effects. Using the City of Calgary's municipal food and yard waste recycling pilot program known as the “Green Cart Pilot” (GCP) as a case study, we adopt a mixed methods approach to analyze practice-based spillover effects (PSEs). The results suggest that the GCP had positive PSEs on dry recycling and food shopping, and negative PSEs on home composting. These PSEs could be tracked through the shared elements and geographies of mutually evolving practices, providing opportunities to respond with further interventions informed by social practice theory.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	spillover effects; social practice theory; mixed methods; recycling; environmental policy
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0008-3658
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 March 2017
Date of Acceptance:	5 March 2017
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2023 06:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/99051

Citation Data

Cited 13 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item