Encouraging Citizens to Take Action for the Climate: RCT Evidence from Lebanon

• In Event: New Frontiers in Experimental Design: Conjoint, Field Experiments, and Beyond

Abstract

How can we encourage citizens to take costly action for the environment? Global recycling rates remain extremely low – yet widespread uptake is needed to reap its environmental rewards. We leverage a field experiment in the Lebanese city of Bickfaya to answer this question. Partnering with the local municipality and a grassroots NGO, we evaluate a program that tracks citizens’ waste, inspects their waste bags, and sends them personalized feedback on how to improve their sorting. Two months after the intervention, we find that randomly inviting citizens to join the program improves their sorting quality by an average of 1.5 out of 5 stars (~160% relative to the control group mean). We also find effects on environmentally-conscious behaviors outside of waste sorting – four months after the intervention, treated households are double as likely to sign up for a raffle where prizes are explicitly “green” (4% vs. 8%). These effects disappear at the 12 month mark, however. A survey of the city’s residents explores mechanisms driving the initial effects — and why they did not last. The results suggest that monitoring, combined with knowledge on how to comply, can boost environmentally-conscious behaviors – even against the backdrop of economic and political crisis — but that financial incentives are likely needed to maintain these effects.

Authors

• Salma Mousa, University of California, Los Angeles

• Trevor Incerti, University of Amsterdam

• Kristen Kao, University of Gothenburg