What is in a sign?

Picking up the poo (dog waste) 

As well as smelling unpleasant, dog waste can contain toxic bacteria, pathogens, and parasites, which are a potential health hazard to people, livestock, wildlife, and habitats, and soil runoff from the land contaminates waterways. The act of picking up by bagging (biodegradable bag) and binning dog waste to remove it from urban or rural public spaces by responsible dog owners is an important pro-environmental and pro-social behaviour in preventing the toxic spread of disease.  

Many factors influence and inform our decisions to dispose of dog waste consistently, across contexts. Signs are a common tool in public spaces, used to guide behaviour, influence decisions, and encourage compliance. Yet their effectiveness varies widely.  By understanding how people respond to cues and perceive messages, we can design signage that drives meaningful behavioural change. 

A few real-world notices are illustrated here to highlight some key principles to consider when designing public messaging for behaviour outcomes.

The ‘Informational/Implication’ Sign

Many dog-fouling campaigns rely on awareness of the consequences (health risks, fines, unpleasantness). In this example, the potentially harmful implications of dog waste on wildlife and children are highlighted.

Knowledge and awareness alone is rarely sufficient to change habitual behaviours, particularly those embedded in routine activities like dog walking. awareness-focused campaigns often plateau at attitude change, with limited behavioural impact (Michie et al., 2011; Marteau et al., 2021).

Fixed Penalty Sign

Although fixed penalty fines are designed to deter unwanted behaviour through negative reinforcement, they are seldom enforced, reducing their influence on compliance. 

Where enforcement is inconsistent or low, punitive or ambiguous signals tend to underperform, and can even backfire by normalising non-compliance or triggering reactance (Tyler, 2006; Sunstein, 2016).  In practice, notices mentioning fines are more effective as social signals, reminding people of expected and acceptable behaviour. People are however more motivated to live up to a positive identity than to avoid punishment.

The ‘Green Dog Walker’ Sign 

This intervention draws on several well-evidenced behavioural principles that consistently outperform punitive or fear-based approaches in public behaviour change campaigns. Rather than emphasising prohibition (“Don’t foul”), sanctions, or legal consequences, the sign asks: “Could you be a Green Dog Walker?” This framing activates positive self-identity rather than defensive reactions. It implies that responsible dog walking is the norm. It positions compliance as something “people like you” already do. It avoids highlighting non-compliance, which could normalise undesirable behaviour.

A substantial body of evidence shows that people are more likely to adopt behaviours that align with a desirable identity they already value (e.g. being responsible, caring, community-minded). Identity-based messaging is particularly effective for pro-social and environmental behaviours (White et al., 2019). By positioning compliance as who you are rather than what you must do, the sign leverages intrinsic motivation rather than external enforcement. 

The invitation to “pledge your support” taps into one of the most robust findings in behaviour change science: commitment increases follow-through. Public or semi-public commitments increase behavioural consistency due to cognitive dissonance and self-perception processes (Festinger, 1957; Bem, 1972). Meta-analyses show that commitment and pledge interventions reliably improve pro-environmental and pro-social behaviours, particularly when framed as voluntary and values-aligned (Lokhorst et al., 2013; Baca-Motes et al., 2013). Even when the pledge is lightweight (e.g. online, symbolic), it increases the likelihood that individuals will see future actions (like picking up dog waste) as part of who they are.

Overall, the ‘Green Dog Walker’ sign communicates expectations without coercion, making compliance feel like a choice rather than an imposition. Importantly, the pledge is voluntary, preserving autonomy, low friction, reducing barriers to engagement, identity-consistent, and reinforcing the “responsible dog owner” self-concept. Attention-grabbing indicators such as icons, footprints, arrows, or animal images can serve as positive nudges. 

The ‘Dog Poo Fairy’ Sign

Humour, especially satire, can cause a distraction or even lower the perceived credibility of the source, making the environmental message seem less serious or trustworthy. The type of humour matters: gentle, relevant humour is more effective than sarcasm that might prompt counterarguing or undermine seriousness. Becker and Anderson’s research on satire about climate change shows that more playful, sarcastic humour may be quickly discounted by audiences, meaning people simply tune out the comedic message without engaging deeply with the underlying environmental issue. 

The poo fairy also backfires by highlighting the prevalence of bad behaviour (“too many people let their dogs foul”), which research shows can normalise the undesirable behaviour (Cialdini et al., 1990; Schultz et al., 2007).  Furthermore, it may have triggered psychological reactance, which is the tendency to resist messages perceived as controlling or threatening autonomy (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Reynolds-Tylus, 2019). Whilst the attempt at positive framing reduces psychological reactance, the moral licensing can undermine compliance and trigger reactance (White et al., 2019). 

Humour can draw attention, but it should usually be paired with clear, factual content to avoid distraction and discounting.  Pre-testing messages with target audiences can help identify humour that enhances rather than dilutes impact.

The ‘Community illustration’ Sign 

Co-design with the local community fosters a sense of ownership and shared responsibility. Social norms are among the most powerful drivers of environmental and civic behaviour, particularly when framed positively (Schultz et al., 2007; BIT, 2014).

Crucially, this sign avoids public shaming or moral condemnation, which can trigger disengagement or oppositional identity formation. Harsh, punitive messaging can increase reactance and resentment, undermine trust in institutions, be less effective in low-enforcement contexts, and disproportionately alienate already compliant groups. Instead, it implicitly establishes a descriptive and injunctive social norm: responsible dog owners exist, and this is the expected behaviour in this place. 

In one report, observational evidence found that many dogs defecate within the first 5 minutes of a walk from the start of a site walk and distractions were identified to be one of the key determinants of failing to pick up and dispose of dog waste.  Such findings suggest early positioning of dog waste bins.  The built environment, context and situation can influence whether someone picks up after their dog. When viewed through a behavioural science lens, effective design thinking is fundamentally about making desired behaviours easy. If the pro-conservation action requires too much effort, signs alone won’t work. Nudges that highlight distance to the next bin with signs such as 'It’s easy to help: bins every 100m.'  or painted paw prints leading to a bin with a sign: 'Follow the trail — keep the reserve clean.' could increase recall and compliance.

The inconvenience of the bin location might be discouraging some users from properly disposing of waste.  To overcome inconvenience, one council trialled a dog poop holding station for walkers to place bagged waste temporarily before picking it up on their return. This aimed to tackle the physical inconvenience; however, alone, it ignored social and cognitive drivers and relies on delayed prospective memory and intentions, i.e., “I’ll get that later,” which humans are particularly bad at. Whilst the council claimed there were reductions in abandoned waste, there were no clear quantitative measures in reduction nor long-term compliance rates and no comparison with control sites (i.e. with no trees). Even if the intended message was temporary storage, the observed behaviour looked like abandonment. Research consistently shows that visible norm violations increase copying, not compliance (Cialdini et al., 1990; Keizer et al., 2008).

Whilst it looked to address inconvenience, it ignored identity and place, meaning, motivation, norms and cues.  Making the undesirable behaviour more visible, the poo tree introduced ambiguity into norms by signalling the following descriptive norm: visible bags equate to  ‘this is what people do here’. When norms are unclear, people justify self-serving interpretations such as ‘Hanging it is easier than carrying it home’ and therefore socially defensible.  

Where bins are absent, perceived effort and low self-efficacy around carrying waste away become major barriers to compliance.  The effectiveness of signs depend on aligning clear social norms with practical infrastructure, intuitive cues, and messages that respect people’s motivations and sense of place.

Overall, the evidence from environmental, civic, and public health research is remarkably consistent: behaviour change is most likely to be sustained when interventions support autonomy, reinforce positive identity, and make the desired action easy and socially normal. When signs reinforce these things, compliance becomes the path of least resistance rather than a moral test.

If you would like to explore evidence-informed approaches to behaviour change signage or public space design, please feel free to get in touch.

References

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