Título: Incentives and Pro-Environmental Behavior: Field Evidence From Waste Sorting
Sala: E22
Hora: 12.30
Resumen: We run a randomized field experiment to quantify the effect of monetary incentives on promoting waste sorting and creating persistent behavior. To conduct the study, we exploit data obtained from a technology that tracks bio-waste sorting in real time. When the monetary incentives are in place, participation in waste sorting of the incentive group is 10 percentage points higher than participation of the control group. Despite an initial decline, this positive effect remains quite constant during the period with incentives in place. After removing the incentives, the effect is maintained up to one month after removing them and it steadily declines afterwards and it eventually disappears four months after the incentives disappear. In addition we provide evidence that the positive results are not generated by subjects cheating to obtain higher rewards. These results show that monetary incentives work for promoting the desired behavior in a pro-social activity such as waste-sorting. They do not crowd-out intrinsic motivation and can even complement it. However, incentives cannot be used to induce lasting effects.