Heterogeneous effects of other-regarding interventions on household recycling: A field experimental study.

Behavioral interventions that address other-regarding motivations (i.e., other-regarding interventions) are gaining momentum as promising tools to stimulate household recycling. However, previous studies have shown considerable variability in the impact of such strategies, and the factors that moderate treatment effects remain poorly studied. Using a field experiment with 7195 households in Quzhou, China, this study investigated treatment effect heterogeneity systematically based on intervention types, treatment durations, personal motivations, and social networks. Three strategies were examined, including biospheric and altruistic appeals and personalized normative feedback. We found that normative feedback outperformed other strategies in inducing household participation in recycling, that the influences of all strategies attenuated over time, and that the feedback effect was greater among recipients with weaker biospheric or altruistic concerns and those embedded within stronger neighbor networks. However, no significant treatment effects were found on the amount of waste recycled. These findings improve the understanding of the heterogeneous impact of other-regarding interventions, with important implications for the design of recycling policies. Future studies need to explore additional moderators and the effects of treatment combinations.

Incentivizing household recycling crowds out public support for other waste management policies: A long-term quasi-experimental study.

Waste management is a prototypical issue that requires multiple policy measures to function together. Yet, the compatibility between waste management policies is vastly understudied. In this paper, we used a longitudinal quasi-experimental methodology to identify the effect of an incentivized household recycling program in Anji, China on public support for other waste management policies. The program was evaluated six and fifteen months after it was implemented, respectively. We found that, despite its positive influence on residents' self-reported recycling behavior, the program reduced support for policy measures concerning waste prevention and harmless disposal. Consistent with the theoretical propositions, such crowding-out was driven by the decrease in personal commitment to pro-environmental goals, perceived issue importance of environmental sustainability, and perceived importance of individual contribution to environmental goods. Further evidence suggests that the crowding-out effect attenuated but did not disappear in the long run. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the holistic relationships between waste management policies, indicating that incentive-based recycling policies can interact negatively with other waste policies by reducing public support for them.

Social-contextual influences on public participation in incentive programs of household waste separation.

Despite the widespread use of financial incentives to encourage public participation in household waste separation, recent studies have revealed the mixed success of this strategy. The present study seeks to advance our understanding of the social-contextual conditions in which financial incentives are more or less effective. Based on theories of social influence, it has investigated how program advocates, neighbor networks, and community norms affect public participation in incentivized waste-separation programs. Generalized linear mixed model analyses of more than 150,000 daily participation records for residents in 347 housing estates in Hangzhou, China have been conducted to examine the theoretical propositions. The results show that substituting ingroup members (block leaders) for outgroup agents (company staff) as program advocates increased the total number of participants. However, block leaders contributed little or even negatively to mobilizing people who had never participated previously. Levels of participation were higher among residents with stronger social networks, but lower in communities with more salient volunteerism norms. These findings illuminate the substantial interaction between financial incentives and social influences, suggesting ways to use social forces to improve incentive programs of household waste separation.

Economic incentive and social influence to overcome household waste separation dilemma: A field intervention study.

China has experienced a rapid growth of solid waste over the years, household waste source-separation is becoming a nationwide strategy for promoting recycling economy and improving urban environmental sustainability. Waste separation, however, may end in failure due to the free-rider problem similarly existing in other pro-environmental collective actions. Along with the economic and sociological/social psychological logic respectively, this study tested the effects of economic incentive and social influence, which are theoretically considered as two general solutions to domestic waste separation dilemma. One hundred and eighty-eight residents in the three communities of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province were assigned to a control group or one of two experimental scenarios, where they were encouraged to participate in waste separation activities through either the economic rewards given on their performance, or door-stepping campaigns aimed at constructing a supportive social environment. Six-month intervention effects were analyzed and showed that economic inducement was more effective than social mobilization in promoting waste separation. Further mediation tests indicated that self-efficacy partially mediated the effects of both strategies, while personal norms were positively associated with two treatments instead of behavior demonstration. In addition, the moderating effects of several socio-demographic factors on psychological mechanisms were also explored. The findings, limitations and implications for future research and policy are discussed in the concluding section.