“Bad rebounds” and the Environment: Bottled water and plastic collection behavior using cross-sectional Italian data

The multidimensional nature of environmental problems is increasingly recognized, as different relevant behaviors may be mutually reinforcing or in a trade-off relationship. This is particularly relevant when the use of resources is tightly linked to their packaging, as in the case of bottled water consumption. This paper aims at using Italian data to assess whether plastic related separated collection and bottled water consumption are complements or substitutes in consumers’ behaviors. Using Cross-sectional Italian data, we provide evidence of a challenging “rebound” effect: individuals more engaged in recycling are also those producing more plastic waste related to bottled water consumption. This has important consequences for policy analysis, since the rebound effect appears to be related to the availability of waste infrastructures: better infrastructure, namely door to door collection, inflate the consumption of (plastic packaged) bottled water. We also provide robustness analysis for our results, specifically addressing the role of endogeneity issues.