Abstract
Promoting pro-environmental behaviour amongst urban dwellers is one of today's greatest sustainability challenges. The aim of this study is to test whether an information intervention, designed based on theories from environmental psychology and behavioural economics, can be effective in promoting recycling of food waste in an urban area. To this end we developed and evaluated an information leaflet, mainly guided by insights from nudging and community-based social marketing. The effect of the intervention was estimated through a natural field experiment in Hökarängen, a suburb of Stockholm city, Sweden, and was evaluated using a difference-in-difference analysis. The results indicate a statistically significant increase in food waste recycled compared to a control group in the research area. The data analysed was on the weight of food waste collected from sorting stations in the research area, and the collection period stretched for almost 2 years, allowing us to study the short- and long term effects of the intervention. Although the immediate positive effect of the leaflet seems to have attenuated over time, results show that there was a significant difference between the control and the treatment group, even 8 months after the leaflet was distributed. Insights from this study can be used to guide development of similar pro-environmental behaviour interventions for other urban areas in Sweden and abroad, improving chances of reaching environmental policy goals.
Highlights
Most sustainability problems we face today are rooted in human behaviour (Vlek and Steg, 2007)
The design of the information leaflet was highly influenced by the phases presented above, we combined the frameworks found within environmental psychology (Steg and Vlek, 2009; McKenzie-Mohr, 2013), and included insights from behavioural economics and nudging
The results show statistically significant support that the information leaflet increased the recycling of food waste in the area
Summary
Most sustainability problems we face today (e.g., global warming, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and air pollutions, and overfishing) are rooted in human behaviour (Vlek and Steg, 2007). Sweden (alongside other countries) has recently set strong policy goals to develop organic collection programs intended to increase the amount of food waste recycled from 38% of the total food waste in 2014 to 50% in 2018, which equals an annual increase of 112 200 tons of food waste (Naturvårdsverket, 2017). To achieve such goals large scale behaviour changes are needed, but organic collection programs developed today tend to focus on structural changes and technological development, often overlooking the essential role that households’ behaviours play in reaching these goals (Geislar, 2017)
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