IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v67y2012icp18-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of norms and policy incentives on household recycling: An international comparison

Author

Listed:
  • Halvorsen, Bente

Abstract

Increased household recycling is a policy goal in many countries. Household recycling is, to a large extent, based on voluntary efforts. It is thus interesting to understand the mechanisms behind household voluntary contributions to recycling, and how they are affected by various policy measures. In this study, we describe the differences in factors affecting household recycling activities across 10 OECD countries. We find that the most important motivations for household recycling are the belief that recycling is good for the environment and that recycling is a civic duty. Increasing the supply of recycling services has a significant effect on household recycling, and door-to-door collection and drop-off centres are the two most effective methods in this respect. Furthermore, the results indicate that the design of monetary incentives may be important to avoid crowding out of morally motivated voluntary contributions, illustrated by the Korean success with volume-based fees.

Suggested Citation

  • Halvorsen, Bente, 2012. "Effects of norms and policy incentives on household recycling: An international comparison," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 18-26.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:67:y:2012:i:c:p:18-26
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2012.06.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344912001061
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2012.06.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Annegrete Bruvoll & Karine Nyborg, 2002. "On the value of households' recycling efforts," Discussion Papers 316, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    2. Hornik, Jacob & Cherian, Joseph & Madansky, Michelle & Narayana, Chem, 1995. "Determinants of recycling behavior: A synthesis of research results," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 105-127.
    3. George L. Van Houtven & Glenn E. Morris, 1999. "Household Behavior under Alternative Pay-as-You-Throw Systems for Solid Waste Disposal," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 75(4), pages 515-537.
    4. Bente Halvorsen, 2008. "Effects of Norms and Opportunity Cost of Time on Household Recycling," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(3), pages 501-516.
    5. James D. Reschovsky & Sarah E. Stone, 1994. "Market incentives to encourage household waste recycling: Paying for what you throw away," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(1), pages 120-139.
    6. Bruno S. Frey, 1997. "Not Just for the Money," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1183.
    7. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    8. Tiller, Kelly & Jakus, Paul M. & Park, William M., 1997. "Household Willingness To Pay For Dropoff Recycling," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 22(2), pages 1-11, December.
    9. Blamey, Russell K., 1998. "Decisiveness, attitude expression and symbolic responses in contingent valuation surveys," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 577-601, March.
    10. Matthew Rabin, 1998. "Psychology and Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 11-46, March.
    11. Bruno S. Frey, 1994. "How Intrinsic Motivation is Crowded out and in," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(3), pages 334-352, July.
    12. Hong Seonghoon & Adams Richard M. & Love H. Alan, 1993. "An Economic Analysis of Household Recycling of Solid Wastes: The Case of Portland, Oregon," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 136-146, September.
    13. Jakus, Paul M. & Tiller, Kelly & Park, William M., 1996. "Generation Of Recyclables By Rural Households," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 21(1), pages 1-13, July.
    14. Don Fullerton & Thomas C. Kinnaman (ed.), 2002. "The Economics of Household Garbage and Recycling Behavior," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2445.
    15. Annegrete Bruvoll & Karine Nyborg, 2004. "The Cold Shiver of Not Giving Enough: On the Social Cost of Recycling Campaigns," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 80(4).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Campbell, Benjamin & Khachatryan, Hayk & Behe, Bridget & Hall, Charles & Dennis, Jennifer, 2016. "Crunch the can or throw the bottle? Effect of “bottle deposit laws” and municipal recycling programs," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 98-109.
    2. Pfister, Naomi & Mathys, Nicole A., 2022. "Waste taxes at work: Evidence from the canton of Vaud in Switzerland," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    3. Struk, Michal, 2017. "Distance and incentives matter: The separation of recyclable municipal waste," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 155-162.
    4. López-Mosquera, Natalia & Lera-López, Fernando & Sánchez, Mercedes, 2015. "Key factors to explain recycling, car use and environmentally responsible purchase behaviors: A comparative perspective," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 29-39.
    5. Fielding, Kelly S. & van Kasteren, Yasmin & Louis, Winnifred & McKenna, Bernard & Russell, Sally & Spinks, Anneliese, 2016. "Using individual householder survey responses to predict household environmental outcomes: The cases of recycling and water conservation," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 90-97.
    6. Miliute-Plepiene, Jurate & Hage, Olle & Plepys, Andrius & Reipas, Algirdas, 2016. "What motivates households recycling behaviour in recycling schemes of different maturity? Lessons from Lithuania and Sweden," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 40-52.
    7. Byrne, Susan & O’Regan, Bernadette, 2014. "Attitudes and actions towards recycling behaviours in the Limerick, Ireland region," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 89-96.
    8. Dias, Nilmara & Máximo, Angela & Belo, Nuno & Carvalho, M. Teresa, 2014. "Packaging glass contained in the heavy residual fraction refused by Portuguese Mechanical and Biological Treatment plants," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 98-105.
    9. Feiyu Chen & Fang Wang & Jing Hou, 2020. "Individual Preference Framework or Group Preference Framework? Which Will Regulate the Impact Path of Product Facilities on Residents’ Waste-Sorting Behavior Better," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-19, March.
    10. Yang, Xisi & Thøgersen, John, 2022. "When people are green and greedy: A new perspective of recycling rewards and crowding-out in Germany, the USA and China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 217-235.
    11. Moh, YiingChiee & -->Abd Manaf, Latifah, 2017. "Solid waste management transformation and future challenges of source separation and recycling practice in Malaysia," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 1-14.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Missios & Ida Ferrara, 2012. "Does Waste Management Policy Crowd out Social and Moral Motives for Recycling?," Working Papers 031, Ryerson University, Department of Economics.
    2. Bente Halvorsen, 2008. "Effects of Norms and Opportunity Cost of Time on Household Recycling," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(3), pages 501-516.
    3. Bente Halvorsen, 2004. "Effects of norms, warm-glow and time use on household recycling," Discussion Papers 389, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    4. Campbell, Benjamin & Khachatryan, Hayk & Behe, Bridget & Hall, Charles & Dennis, Jennifer, 2016. "Crunch the can or throw the bottle? Effect of “bottle deposit laws” and municipal recycling programs," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 98-109.
    5. Heller, Marit H. & Vatn, Arild, 2017. "The divisive and disruptive effect of a weight-based waste fee," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 275-285.
    6. Annegrete Bruvoll & Karine Nyborg, 2004. "The Cold Shiver of Not Giving Enough: On the Social Cost of Recycling Campaigns," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 80(4).
    7. Bohm, Robert A. & Folz, David H. & Kinnaman, Thomas C. & Podolsky, Michael J., 2010. "The costs of municipal waste and recycling programs," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(11), pages 864-871.
    8. Damiano Fiorillo, 2013. "Household waste recycling: national survey evidence from Italy," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(8), pages 1125-1151, October.
    9. Ferrara, Ida & Missios, Paul, 2011. "A Cross-Country Study of Household Waste Prevention and Recycling: Assessing the Effective of Policy Instruments," MPRA Paper 70811, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Shigeru Matsumoto, 2014. "The Opportunity Cost of Pro-Environmental Activities: Spending Time to Promote the Environment," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 119-130, March.
    11. van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2008. "Environmental regulation of households: An empirical review of economic and psychological factors," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(4), pages 559-574, July.
    12. Marie Briguglio, 2016. "Household Cooperation In Waste Management: Initial Conditions And Intervention," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 497-525, July.
    13. Abbott, Andrew & Nandeibam, Shasikanta & O'Shea, Lucy, 2013. "Recycling: Social norms and warm-glow revisited," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 10-18.
    14. Hua Zhang & Zong-Guo Wen, 2014. "Residents’ Household Solid Waste (HSW) Source Separation Activity: A Case Study of Suzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(9), pages 1-21, September.
    15. Hage, Olle & Söderholm, Patrik & Berglund, Christer, 2009. "Norms and economic motivation in household recycling: Empirical evidence from Sweden," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 155-165.
    16. Gorm Kipperberg & Douglas Larson, 2012. "Heterogeneous Preferences for Community Recycling Programs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 53(4), pages 577-604, December.
    17. Matsumoto, Shigeru, 2020. "Do individuals free ride on participation in environmental policies? Personal values and waste management practices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    18. Yokoo, Hide-Fumi & Kawai, Kosuke & Higuchi, Yuki, 2018. "Informal recycling and social preferences: Evidence from household survey data in Vietnam," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 109-124.
    19. D'Amato, Alessio & Mancinelli, Susanna & Zoli, Mariangela, 2016. "Complementarity vs substitutability in waste management behaviors," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 84-94.
    20. Ida Ferrara & Paul Missios, 2012. "A Cross-Country Study of Household Waste Prevention and Recycling: Assessing the Effectiveness of Policy Instruments," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 88(4), pages 710-744.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Household recycling; Norms; International comparison;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:67:y:2012:i:c:p:18-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.