Eliminate litter. End waste. Improve places.
Donate
Subscribe
Log in
We’re watching you - Using behavioural insights to reduce dog fouling by 46%
Decreasing incidents of dog fouling by an average of 46% through Keep Britain Tidy’s “We’re Watching You” poster campaign.
Overview & Objective
In 2013, Keep Britain Tidy conducted a series of workshops and an online survey with local authorities and other land manager organisations as part of its Defra-funded Social Innovation to Prevent Littering programme. These identified that dog fouling was a priority litter issue for local authorities and other land managers, often due to the volume of complaints from residents. The feedback we received was that incidents of dog fouling tended to be worse at night time or in areas that are not overlooked, such as alleyways. There was a feeling that this could be because some dog owners act irresponsibly when they think they aren’t being watched.
Approach
Keep Britain Tidy, working with 17 local land manager partners, developed and delivered an experiment to test the use of posters displaying a ‘watching eyes’ image at dog fouling ‘hotspots’ to try and combat the issue. The A3-size posters used a luminescent film that ‘charged up’ during the day and glowed in darkened areas to increase their visibility at night.
The posters were tested at eight target sites per partner, and were monitored for incidents of dog fouling, three weeks before and three weeks during the display of the posters.
Outcome
-
The average change in incidents of dog fouling (taking both increases and decreases into account) was a 46% decrease per site. 75% of target sites and 56% of displacement sites experienced a decrease in dog fouling incidents following implementation of the posters.
-
Of the four versions of poster, it appears that the positive reinforcement message (Poster 3) was the most effective in decreasing incidents of dog fouling across the target and displacement sites (49% reduction overall), however the differences in reductions across the four versions (ranging from 43% to 49%) did not reach statistical significance.
-
Keep Britain Tidy now offers ‘creative package’ for partners looking to implement this campaign in their local areas. Hundreds of partners are already successfully using the campaign and making a real difference in their area.
Quotes
“Some real positives came out of this experiment –residents in four of the areas targeted asked for the posters to stay. People were very aware of the posters, they really noticed a difference.”
“[The posters are] appreciated by complainants as they could see that the Council was making an effort.”
See more case studies“One of the things was that people have requested them [the posters] to be used elsewhere –people want them and want them tried somewhere else.”
Be the first to know
We'll email you about our latest campaigns and how you can get involved through volunteering and donating. Together, we can make change happen. Join us!