Review of 'Influences on single-use and reusable cup use: a multidisciplinary mixed-methods approach to designing interventions reducing plastic waste'

Reviewer: Dario Cottafava

Publication date of review: 2021-04-08

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Dario Cottafava2

Influences on single-use and reusable cup use: a multidisciplinary mixed-methods approach to designing interventions reducing plastic wasteCrossref ScienceOpen

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Average rating:	    Rated 2 of 5.
Level of importance:	    Rated 4 of 5.
Level of validity:	    Rated 1 of 5.
Level of completeness:	    Rated 1 of 5.
Level of comprehensibility:	    Rated 2 of 5.
Competing interests:	None

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Influences on single-use and reusable cup use: a multidisciplinary mixed-methods approach to designing interventions reducing plastic waste

Ayşe Lisa Allison, Fabiana Lorencatto, Susan Michie … (2020)

Background : An estimated 2.5-5 billion single-use coffee cups are disposed of annually in the UK, most of which consist of a plastic lining. Due to the difficulty of recycling poly-coated material, most of these cups end up as litter or in landfill. As hot beverage consumption is a consumer behaviour, behaviour change interventions are necessary to reduce the environmental impacts of single-use coffee cup waste. Basing the design of interventions on a theoretical understanding of behaviour increases transparency of the development process, the likelihood that the desired changes in behaviour will occur and the potential to synthesise findings across studies. Aim: The present paper presents a methodology for identifying influences on using single-use use and reusable cups as a basis for designing intervention strategies. Method and application : An online survey and follow-up interviews were developed by a multi-disciplinary group of practitioners, health psychologists, material scientists, behavioural scientists and catering staff. They used two behaviour change frameworks: The Theoretical Domains Framework and Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behaviour model of behaviour. Research findings can inform selection of intervention strategies using a third framework, the Behaviour Change Wheel. The application of the methodology is illustrated in relation the setting of a university campus. Conclusions : We have developed a detailed method for identifying behavioural influences relevant to pro-environmental behaviours, together with practical guidance for each step and a worked example.

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Review information

DOI:: 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-SOCSCI.AJFSIH.v1.RHDKZV

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This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com.

Keywords: behaviour change,circular economy,plastic waste,single-use,COM-B,intervention,reusable,The Environment,coffee cups,Behaviour Change Wheel,Sustainable development,influences

Review text

The topic is up to date but, in my opinion, the way the paper is written is not adequate for a scientific publication.

Interesting premises, and introduction. The literature presented and the framework could be really interesting to analyze pro-environmental behavior but not as it is presented.

I strongly suggest following a classic structure:

1) Introduction: frame of the general problem, literature gap, research question, and novelty

1.1) Literature review

2) Methodology: design, method, case study description.

3) Results and discussion

4) Conclusion

The wrong structure generates a lack of clarity in the presentation and in the general reading.

At the actual stage, the authors attempted to present a methodology instead of results, but without really adding novelty since the questions of the survey are quite trivial and partially bias in the actual form. Moreover, the framework presented in the first part is hard to connect with the survey. I suggest mapping some aspects presented in the framework with the current proposed survey. Finally, within the paper, it is not necessary to repeat several times that the survey was interrupted by the COVID-19, since the aim should be to present a method rather than results and for this purpose the COVID-19 has no impact.

Some minor comments:

1) pg. 2: "Life cycle assessments have shown reusable cups to be a more sustainable alternative to single-use cups, if used over 72 times (6)." It is not always true. It depends on which impact category is considered.

2) pg. 6: Aims section. I suggest to move in the introduction before the literature review

3) pg. 6: "Data collection ...." move it into methodology section

4) pg.7: "This will be a mixed-methods study". Citation needed