Cheating in a public good game: river waste density and the impact of settlement zones on two of Indonesia’s river basins

ABSTRACT

Plastic waste is one of the most notorious of all environmental issues – and also a hard problem to solve. From marine conservationists to engineers, many people have addressed the problem by tapping into technological solutions or attempting to raise public awareness, yet there are only limited examples of behavioural explanations for why people continue to litter in public places such as waterways. In this research, we examine the impact of settlement location (source, transition and floodplain zone) and perceived difficulties in getting the necessary resources. Focusing on river basins in Bali and East Java, we will also assess people’s willingness to contribute resources in a Public Good Game, as a hypothetical reflection of their shares in community’s greater good. We found that people living upstream contributed more to public good, but failed to correlate the effect of perceived difficulties in gaining resources to their contribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation psychology
• tragedy of the commons
• river debris

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Erita Narhetali for her original version of Public Good Game in Indonesian context that we used for this study. A major help was also provided by Katharine Owens in guiding us for water debris measurement. We are also thankful of all facilitators and volunteers who helped us in conducting field work: Dwi Agung Prasetyo, Fahmilu Kurniawan, Farah Saufika, I Made Agus Budiyasa, I Wayan Sanjaya, Komang Kusuma Hendra, Hendra Setiawan, Dwiki Ansarullah, Amer Risnadi, Dwi Suputra, Sri Junantari, also all members of Sabers Pungli community in Batu city. PIK contributes to conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, visualization, and writing original draft. HS contributes to conceptualization, funding acquisition, supervision, methodology, and review original draft. MA contributes to data curation, formal analysis, methodology, visualization, and writing original draft. LDJ contributes to data curation, investigation, and project administration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Author PK was employed by company Catalyze Communications. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Data availability

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KE6V1V.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by National Geographic Society [Grant Number EC-KOR-56385R-19].