Dixon, AC, Farrell, G orcid.org/0000-0002-3987-8457 and Tilley, N (2022) Illegal waste fly-tipping in the Covid-19 pandemic: enhanced compliance, temporal displacement, and urban–rural variation. Crime Science, 11. 8. ISSN 2193-7680
Abstract
Objective
Illegal dumping of household and business waste, known as fly-tipping in the UK, is a significant environmental crime. News agencies reported major increases early in the COVID-19 pandemic when waste disposal services were closed or disrupted. This study examines the effect of lockdowns on illegal dumping in the UK.
Method
A freedom of information request was sent to all local authorities in the UK asking for records of reported incidents of fly-tipping for before and after the first national lockdown. ARIMA modelling and year-on-year comparison was used to compare observed and expected levels of fly-tipping. Urban and rural local authorities were compared.
Results
A statistically significant decline in fly-tipping during the first lockdown was followed by a similar increase when lockdown ended. The effects largely cancelled each other out. There was pronounced variation in urban–rural experience: urban areas, with higher rates generally, experienced most of the initial drop in fly-tipping while some rural authorities experienced an increase.
Conclusion
Waste services promote compliance with laws against illegal dumping. When those services were disrupted during lockdown it was expected that fly-tipping would increase but, counter-intuitively, it declined. This enhanced compliance effect was likely due to increased perceived risk in densely populated urban areas. However, as lockdown restrictions were eased, fly-tipping increased to clear the backlog, indicating temporal displacement.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022, The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number RCUK (Research Councils UK) ES/V00445X/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Oct 2022 13:34 |
Last Modified: | 11 Oct 2022 13:34 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SpringerOpen |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s40163-022-00170-3 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:191545 |
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Filename: Dixon et al 2022 Illegal waste fly-tipping in the pandemic.pdf
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