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Environmental harm from plastic pollution partly results from compliance failure at the individual level. Three prevalent non-compliant motivations for polluting plastics include economic gains, ignorance of the rules and unlikely penalization from inadequately enforced rules. Given compliance is primarily the responsibility of local waste management, we conducted interviews to gain insights to the factors driving changes in the crucial onground controls of plastic pollution. We expand on non-compliant motivations and provide a theoretical framework to test the aforementioned. We show that compliance strategies are strongly driven by state judicial and economic controls, specifically new plastic legislation and levies. Furthermore, the priorities of waste managers and the socio-economics and population density of their constituents drove changes in local management efforts. Our findings support the view that the growing global attention on plastic pollution shapes not only what happens at a state level, but also importantly on-ground at the local level.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	plastic pollution, municipal government, compliance strategies, policy change, situational crime prevention, theory of planned behaviour, economic rationality
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Policy and administration
Research Field:	Environment policy
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Environmental policy, legislation and standards
Objective Field:	Environmental education and awareness
UTAS Author:	Willis, KA (Dr Kathy Willis)
UTAS Author:	Hardesty, BD (Dr Britta Hardesty)
UTAS Author:	Wilcox, C (Dr Chris Wilcox)
ID Code:	150458
Year Published:	2021
Web of Science® Times Cited:	3
Deposited By:	Directorate
Deposited On:	2022-06-16
Last Modified:	2022-06-16
Downloads:	0