Knowledge Bank

Universities are implementing composting programs to cut scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, waste management costs, and overall campus food waste. Literature suggests that university composting programs impact an individual’s environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, and overall sustainable behaviors. Behavioral spillover is an emerging topic in social science to describe the idea that if an individual is involved in a target behavior, then another behavior is affected by the intervention for the target behavior. In the case of this study, composting is the target behavior, and the measured spillover behaviors are related to different sustainability indicators. Behavioral spillover can be positive or negative, so this study seeks to identify how a composting program may positively or negatively encourage different pro-environmental behaviors or shifts in environmental attitudes. Two surveys measuring compost knowledge, environmental behaviors, and environmental attitudes were administered to Ohio State University’s on-campus residents. Students automatically enrolled in an in-room composting program were contrasted to other students. Surveys were administered in the middle and at the end of the program to measure shifts in behaviors and attitudes over time. We hypothesized that automatically enrolled students would have a more positive change in their sustainable behaviors and be more aware of their environmental footprint. This study found that automatic enrollment made a statistically significant difference in student composting participation in the middle of the school year, but not at the end of the school year. Additionally, the study concludes that the quality of composting education is statistically significantly associated with student composting engagement. Lastly, this study found no evidence to support that automatic enrollment in composting programs leads to positive spillovers to other pro-environmental behaviors by the participating students.