Site `dumpability': Where is illegal dumping in forests, and does signage help reduce it?

• Cameron Williams ^[1] ; Tobias Probst ^[2] ; Vicki Hall ^[2] ; Samantha Low-Choy ^[1] ; Daniela Vasco ^[1]
  1. [1] Mt Gravatt
  2. [2] Department of Environment and Heritage Protection
• Localización: Proceedings of the 35th International Workshop on Statistical Modelling : July 20-24, 2020 Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain / Itziar Irigoien Garbizu (ed. lit.), Dae-Jin Lee (ed. lit.), Joaquín Martínez Minaya (ed. lit.), María Xosé Rodríguez Álvarez (ed. lit.), 2020, ISBN 978-84-1319-267-3, págs. 366-369
• Idioma: inglés
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  • Previous research had identi ed factors a ecting people's decisions to dump household waste, illegally, in forests. This information helped redesign signage aiming to deter dumping. The main question was: Where should signage be placed? From the perspective of state forest managers: What kinds of locations in the state forest are more `dumpable' and tend to attract more illegal dumping than others? This study was one of the rst to address the environmental context of dumping within a forest, which aggregates the psychological context of motivations of many individuals. Due to this novelty, we used expert elicitation techniques to formulate a conceptual model, which guided design of eld data collection, both before and after introducing signage into the forest. Importantly, this also engaged a range of stakeholders with the project aims. Signage locations were pre-determined by regulators and forresters. Information from three phases of surveillance in the forest was analysed using a `multimethod' statistical approach, starting with models more familiar to stakeholders: examining main e ects via regression with smoothing splines; and high-order interactions via regression trees. Model-based clustering via Bayesian mixture models permitted insight directly relevant to the research questions, and found that: highly dumpable sites occurred both in close or far proximity to waste collection sites with varying pro les describing seclusion. Overall ndings across model kinds con rmed that the `nudging' sign motifs were most e ective whilst evidence was con icting regarding e ectiveness of didactic signage.