Urban littering remains a persistent challenge in cities across the Global South, where enforcement capacity is limited, social hierarchies shape responsibility for sanitation, and behavioral interventions alone often fail to produce lasting change. I examine a case of Indore city in India to explore how psychological ownership and place-based attachment can help solve the commons dilemma of littering. Drawing on interviews with residents, documentary evidence, and field observations, the analysis situates the city’s reforms within three dominant theoretical frameworks: enforcement-based regulation, self-governance, and nudges. While each approach offers partial solutions, the case illustrates that the coordinated application of these frameworks has cultivated collective psychological ownership of public spaces. Residents’ internalization of cleanliness norms, reinforced by credible service delivery, participatory engagement, and visible behavioral cues, transformed compliance from an externally imposed obligation into an intrinsically valued civic commitment. The findings highlight how robust governance can align institutional credibility, social norms, and citizen engagement to sustain urban public goods and suggest directions for research on the mechanisms, scope, and limits of psychological ownership in urban environments.
Kulwinder Kaur (Thu,) studied this question.