published in: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2021, 106, 102404.
We explore the power of behavioral economic insights to influence the level of households' recycling and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) by examining the effectiveness of a green nudge, the adoption of a Clear Bag Policy that was implemented in 2015 in a mid-size urban municipality in Canada. Using a Regression Discontinuity (RD) Design on universe administrative data, our analysis shows that this green nudge promoted recycling, and reduced both refuse and total MSW. While recycling increased by 15 percent, total MSW decreased by 27 percent overall between August 2015 and July 2017. Our results also demonstrate heterogeneity in response to a Clear Bag Policy across neighborhoods with varying socioeconomic indicators. Our findings suggest that green nudges can serve as effective policy instruments in devising future environment policies.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.