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On the way to reduce marine microplastics pollution. Research landscape of psychosocial drivers
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A review of psychosocial drivers of marine plastic pollution found that factors including consumer convenience preferences, low perceived personal responsibility, and weak norm activation explain why behavioral change around plastic use is slow, and that interventions combining social norms messaging with structural changes show the most promise.
Current human lifestyle generates enormous amounts of plastics and microplastics that end in the ocean and threaten marine life. Exposure to microplastics seems to threaten human health too. Although the degree of damage is not clear yet, precautionary approach urgently requires a change of societal habits. The objective of this study was to discover emerging issues of priority for psychosocial investigation. For this we have compared the landscape research of Reviews with that of Perspectives articles of the last decade, to identify mismatches that unravel still understudied subjects. Results revealed that circular economy is a focus in Perspectives but is not main topic of current psychosocial research. Regarding the actors involved in the change towards circular economy, although companies are priority in Perspectives current research is focused on consumers. Results suggest the need for more efforts on the investigation of corporative responsibility in the way to stop microplastics pollution.
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.