The Effect of Music on Waste Sorting

Abstract

Awareness of environmental protection concerns is growing among the public, but public waste disposal containers give no incentive to properly sort waste in Taiwan. Instead, people are often left to rely on their personal moral habits in this context. Most research in this area focuses on the design of the trash can itself or the graphics associated with it. Changing the waste sorting habits of the public with music is little discussed. This study applies itself to this gap in the literature by exploring the use of music to explore the relationship between music and waste-sorting behavior.

In this study, 43 Kansei words related to waste sorting were collected and screened by a focus group. Five groups of Kansei words related to waste sorting were obtained through a factor analysis of the results of a questionnaire survey. One or two songs were chosen from each of the 50 categories announced by the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan to be our music samples. After music that was too similar in style was deleted, 40 music samples remained. Then, experts in music divided the 40 music samples into the nine groups, in relation to the Farnsworth mood clock. A representative piece of music was chosen by expert in music from each group. Eight pieces of music were combined with five groups of waste-sorting words. Two successfully matched samples were obtained for use in experiments.

The experiments involved a one-way analysis of variance, descriptive statistics, and post-test interviews. The results were as follows: (1) Music affects waste-sorting behavior. (2) Music samples can be obtained through a combination of relevant vocabulary and the Farnsworth mood clock. (3) On this subject, subjective cognition is consistent with objective behavior, and both indicate that music affects sorting behavior by generating positive emotions while performing negative-valence tasks. (4) In all, 17 waste-sorting words were provided, falling into five groups.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Hsi-Jen Chen (Supervisor)