Hey

The recovery account for an account created via 'blocktrades' is blocktrades. You can do this via the website. Alternatively, you can change the recovery account (as has been done by 55 accounts in this dataset) to be an existing account.

In addition, could the fact that these accounts were created for free contribute to the lazy attitude of the account owners?

I would agree with that. Nothing lost, and nothing gained.

I'm thinking that when we have quite a number of users here that we can compete with some other social media platforms, Steem will likely remove the free account creation.

That's possible. It may not be liked by some, as not all can afford to 'pay to play', but i suspect it would put a good dent in the amount of spam/abusive accounts created.

... I have noticed that those I got to pay for the 10 steem account creation seems to be more active than those I got to use the free Steem account creation method.

Some data to back up your theory above, nice!