Impacts of pecuniary and non-pecuniary information on pro-environmental behavior: A household waste collection and disposal program in Surabaya city

Abstract

Information strategies are increasingly used to promote pro-environmental behavior through changing perceptions, knowledge, awareness and norms. While some studies have argued that information strategies are ineffective, others have reported, that information strategies can have immediate impacts. Information strategies are particularly relevant in developing countries such as Indonesia because of their low-cost and immediate impact. The objective of this paper is to compare the impacts of pecuniary and non-pecuniary information on stated preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved waste collection and disposal program. Stated preferences were elicited by using a randomized conjoint field experiment. The information treatments were in the form of posters and were randomly assigned to the respondents. Among the seven attributes used in the conjoint analysis, the separation of non-organic waste and recycling as an intermediate processing technology had significant positive effects on the rate of support. Moreover, pecuniary information was found to directly influence household preference for payment for an improved waste collection and disposal program while affecting none of the other design elements of waste management services. In the reference case in which the no information treatment was applied, the lower bound of the mean WTP for marginalized improvements in a waste collection and disposal program was estimated to be USD 14.65. The study also found that pecuniary information increased WTP by 20.5%, whereas non-pecuniary information had a negative but statistically insignificant effect on WTP.