Systematic, quality appraisal of household recycling influences research finds evidence is mostly insufficient

This review develops and pilots a novel quality appraisal framework, specifically tailored to the needs of interdisciplinary reviews of the influences on recycling and other pre-environmental behaviours. Application of the bespoke framework to a set of 81 systematically selected recycling papers highlights the substantial lack of causal evidence and the weak construct validity of measured ‘behaviour’. These quality issues undermine the ability of individual studies and the body of literature as a whole to draw strong conclusions about what factors have causal influence on real-world recycling behaviour in broad populations of interest. At the same time, this review identifies instances of better practice and key future directions to improve the quality of research and confidence in what influences household recycling behaviour.