The object of our research is recycling practices in Rome. The Government of Roma Capitale has approved a ¿Plan for the Reduction and Management of Post-Consumer Materials (2017-2021)¿. The increase up to 70% of the percentage of recycled waste is one of the key targets. The fulfillment of the plan rests on citizens¿ engagement at different levels: individual behaviours, participative decision-making processes, civic associations¿ engagement for the implementation of specific actions.
For this reason in our research we frame recycling as an interaction system among Municipality (as a political and executive actor), professional staff (AMA, the public company charged of the waste collection and treatment in Rome) and citizens. According to this framework the success of recycling policies depends on the interplay of intentions, perception, attitudes and behaviours of all the agents involved.
To better analyse this complex object of research, a mixed-methods design will be carry out. A qualitative approach will be used to study how public institutions, AMA and environmental grassroots organizations frame the issue of recycling, and to understand their expectations in order to widespread the recycling culture and practice in Rome. On the other hand, a more quantitative data collection and analysis design will be develop to investigate citizens¿ attitudes, opinions and behaviours about recycling.
To gather data about citizens¿ recycling practices a smartphone app will be implemented. By the app it will be also possible to get contextual and punctual information (such as garbage bins conditions) from citizens, fostering in this way a monitoring system based on the interaction between citizens and institutions.
The two parts of the research (the qualitative analysis of institutions¿ and organizations¿ visions and activities and the quantitative analysis of citizens¿ attitudes and behaviours) will be blended together and shared with local stakeholders and decision makers.
As we noted in the ¿Description and objectives of the project¿ section, most of the researches about recycling are based on very circumscribed accounting schemes: some of them focus on sensitivity to environmental issues; some frame recycling as technical capability, other as an expression of altruism, and so on.
In our research recycling is framed as an interaction system among several collective and individual agents: politicians, professional and technical staff charged of the collection and treatment of waste, civic associations devoted to recycling and environmental issues in general, citizens. We think that this framework fits well with recent experiences of governance of recycling. Over the years, a lot of administrative local projects have tried to involve citizens in order to resolve public waste problems (Bobbio, 2002). Most of them have tried to implement a flexible model of governance based on citizens¿ demand of political and social participation (from the consultation to the realization of forms of deliberative democracy) (Moini, 2012) and on the involvement of grassroots organizations devoted to the defence and enhancement of common goods (Couldry, 2010).
Experiences like that can be considered participatory processes in the framework of public engagement and/or in that of civic engagement, depending on whether the participation process has been fostered by public administration or by citizens (Dahlgren, 2009; Moro, 2013). In both cases the success of experiences like that depends on the interplay of intentions, perception, attitudes and behaviours of all the agents involved (Montani and Marciano, 2012; Bartoletti and Faccioli, 2016). For this reason we aim to get and analyse data to understand how policy makers and institutional stakeholders view citizens, their involvement in environmental issues and their possible roles in governance processes (Mazzara et al. 2016), and not only to study ¿confidence in institutions¿ issues, that is a more typical theme of public/civic engagement research.
Furthermore, from the citizen¿s point of view, levels and forms of public/civic engagement may depend on ¿trust in others¿, and not only on ¿confidence in institutions¿ (Fukuyama 1995; Putnam 2000). This is why the survey scheduled in the phase 3.2 of our research (see section ¿Description of the activities and tasks of the participants¿) will be design to study the general theme of civicness (Gubert and Pollini, 2008), and the interplay of values and norms that shape how people live and act in and for their communities. The analysis of more specific attitudes (such as sensitivity to environmental issues) will be contextualized in this more general framework.
Some final notes about a methodological innovation of our research design. In the phase 3.2 we aim to gathered data about citizens¿ recycling practices. To this scope we decide to implement a smartphone app for diary data collection. This data collection system has been already effectively used for other kinds of daily recurring activities (Chatzitheochari et al., 2017); its application to recycling practices allows also to get contextual and punctual information (such as garbage bins conditions) from citizens, fostering in this way a monitoring system based on the interaction between citizens and institutions.
References
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Chatzitheochari et al. (2017) Using New Technologies for Time Diary Data Collection. In ¿Social Indicator Research¿, 2017, pp.: 1-12.
Couldry, N. (2010). Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Sage Publications, London.
Bartoletti, R. e Faccioli, F. (2016) Public engagement, local policies and citizens' participation: an italian case study of civic collaboration. In ¿Social Media + Society¿, III, 2.
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