Reduce, Reuse, and Organize: Recycling and Participation in the Environmental Movement

This paper examines the relationship between the frequency of participation in recycling programs and participation in the environmental movement. Although many studies exist on the factors affecting recycling behavior, few examine its relationship with the environmental movement. This is an especially important link to understand more fully as participation in recycling programs has become increasingly common but efforts continue to increase participation in recycling programs. I utilize data from the 2010 U.S. General Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme to examine this relationship using four Logistic Regression models. I test the association between recycling behavior and several forms of participation in the environmental movement, finding that recycling has a statistically significant, positive relationship with donating money, signing petitions, and joining an organization, but not on protesting for an environmental cause