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Littering of cigarette butts is a major environmental challenge. In 2022, ~124 billion cigarette butts were littered in the United States. This litter may pose an environmental justice concern by disproportionately affecting human and environmental health in communities of color or communities of low socioeconomic status. However, the lack of data on the distribution and magnitude of cigarette butt littering prevents an environmental justice analysis and limits the ability to tackle this environmental challenge. We conducted an environmental justice assessment of tobacco product waste, specifically cigarette butts, through spatially-explicit, place-based estimates across the contiguous U.S. We built a bottom-up model by synthesizing census tract-level population and smoking prevalence, state-level cigarette consumption, and published littering data to assess the spatial pattern of cigarette consumption and littering, and its implications for environmental injustice in >71,600 U.S. census tracts. Further, we compared the model output to urbanicity (rural-urban commuting area) and Social-Environmental Risk (SER; CDC Environmental Justice Index). Cigarette butt density was not uniformly distributed across the U.S. and ranged from 0–45.5 butts/m2, with an area-weighted average of 0.019 ± 0.0005 butts/m2. Cigarette butt density was 96 times higher in metropolitan vs. rural areas. Cigarette butt density increased significantly with SER, with 5.6 times more littered cigarette butts, and a steeper response to population density, in census tracts with the highest SER vs. the lowest SER. These results demonstrate the relative influences of location, smoking prevalence, and population density, and show that cigarette butt littering is a potential environmental justice concern in the U.S. This study provides information that may help devise targeted strategies to reduce cigarette butt pollution and prevent disproportionate impacts. The spatial data layer with place-based cigarette consumption and butt density is a tool that can support municipal, state, and federal level policy work and future studies on associations among cigarette butt pollution and environmental health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a major natural disaster relate to individuals' orientation towards society? We collected repeated cross‐sectional surveys before (n = 644) and after the 2010 Chile earthquake (n = 1,389) to examine levels of national identity, prosocial values, helping motivations, and prosocial behaviours in the context of such a calamitous societal event. Our research questions, derived from the literature on helping in times of crisis, considered how natural disasters may implicate identity and prosociality, as well as how identity, prosocial values, and motivations are linked to prosocial action after a disaster. Higher levels of national identity, helping motivations, and disaster‐related helping were found after the earthquake, suggesting that in the aftermath of a disaster, people unite under a common national identity and are motivated to take action related to disaster relief. National identity and prosocial values were closely linked to helping after the earthquake, but specific helping motivations rarely predicted prosocial behaviours. Additionally, proximity to the epicentre was related to higher levels of national identity and participation in reconstruction efforts. These findings contribute to our understanding of people's responses to natural disasters and suggest ways of encouraging prosocial behaviour in the aftermath of unexpected tragic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand the consistency of people’s proenvironmental intentions and behaviors, we set out to examine two sets of research questions. First, do people perform (1) different types of proenvironmental behaviors consistently, and (2) the same proenvironmental behavior consistently across settings? Second, are there consistent predictors of proenvironmental behavioral intentions across behavior and setting type? Participants reported four recycling and conservation behaviors across three settings, revealing significant variability in rates of behaviors across settings. Prior behavior, attitudes toward the behavior, and importance of the behaviour consistently predicted proenvironmental intentions. However, perceived behavioral control tended to predict intentions to perform proenvironmental behavior outside the home. Future research aimed at understanding and influencing different proenvironmental behaviors should carefully consider how settings affect intentions and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]