system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does socioeconomic class affect environmental behavior? Would a "War on Littering" replicate the social targeting of the "War on Drugs"?
gpt
A relevant idea to consider here is the oft-cited "Broken Windows Theory," a controversial concept that refers to norm-based behavior, namely behavior responding to cues of urban decay.  Really the only empirical study (if you can call his work empirical :P) was by Stanford Prison Experiment creator and noted social psychologist Phil Zimbardo (1969), though the idea was first introduced by political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Keller.

Equal parts social and environmental psychology, the broken window theory (not to be confused with the broken window fallacy) essentially states that environmental evidence of urban decay: dilapidated and abandoned buildings, broken windows (for which the theory was named), and litter act as social cues that seems to influence crime.

Zimbardo tested the theory this way: he parked and abandoned two cars (both used, but in good condition) in two separate locations in California and New York.  

Of the car parked in the Bronx:

>”Scott Fraser, a social psychologist at New York University, was one of
the observers who kept round-the-clock vigils over the car for 64
hours. What surprised him was that most of the car stripping took place
in broad daylight. All of the theft was done by clean-cut, well-dressed
middle-class people. Furthermore, the major theft and damage was always observed by someone else. “Sometimes passersby would engage in casual conversation with the miscreants,” says Fraser.

>By the end of the first 26 hours, a steady parade of vandals had removed
the battery, radiator, air cleaner, radio antenna, windshield wipers,
right-hand-side chrome strip, hubcaps, a set of jumper cables, a gas
can, a can of car wax, and the left rear tire . Nine hours later, random destruction began
when two laughing teen-agers tore off the rearview mirror and began
throwing it at the headlights and front windshield and into the Carriage. 

>Eventually, five eight-year-olds claimed the car as
their private playground, crawling in and out of it and smashing the
windows. One of the last visitors was a middle-aged man in a camel's
hair coat and matching hat, pushing a baby in a carriage. He stopped,
rummaged through the trunk, took out an unidentifiable part, put it in
the baby carriage, and wheeled off.

The car in Palo Alto was a bit different.  The car was left to its own devices and remained unscathed for nearly a week until Zimbardo himself broke one of the windows.  The car was quickly stripped after.

Understand that urban decay, litter, and vandalism have little to do with socioeconomic class, but more to do with sense of community.  One of the most important observations of the experiment were that most of the vandals were well-dressed and appeared to be middle-class.  Urban decay can signal that the bonds of responsibility that bind communities together have weakened.  The ensuing apathy results in a sense of environmental anonymity.  

Think of the destructive behavior that follows as an extension of the same kind of diffusion of responsibility that causes crowds of people to ignore screams for help.  We don't do well with anonymity.  We know anonymizing individuals increases aggression, so it makes sense that anonymizing settings (i.e. removing the sense that the setting is cared-for by participants in that setting) would be prone to more crime.

So why was the Bronx car stripped without the broken window, and stripped so quickly where the Palo Alto car stood unmolested for FIVE DAYS?  According to Zimbardo, anonymity.  Palo Alto was a small community relative to the Bronx.  The larger community offered more opportunity for social anonymity.

The question isn't whether or not socioeconomic class affects environmental behavior.  The question is how environments affect environmental behavior.  


***References***

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2013). *Social Psychology (8th ed.)*

Kelling, G., Coles, C., (1995). *Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities*

Zimbardo, P., (2007) *The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil*

Zimbardo, P. (1969). Diary of a Vandalized Car. *TIME*.