Changing household waste separation behaviour through monetary incentives, nudges and unverified self-reports

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is a fast-growing global problem as most MSW worldwide is landfilled or dumped. Implementing separation at source is proven to help reduce landfilling. In countries like China, India, Israel and many others, public participation in the separation of waste is difficult to achieve. Experiments found that economic incentives can help change waste separation behaviours, but the main problem is the verification process before providing the incentives. We suggest a self-reporting based incentive model, combining behavioural economics’ principles with micro-rewards based on self-reports. We conducted three extensive field experiments to test the model in three communities with high, medium and low socioeconomic status and different living environments (suburban houses, village houses and apartment buildings). The experiments included separating different materials like packaging materials and food waste. The results show that participating families more than doubled their separated amounts of materials from waste. Using the model may lower landfilling of MSW and improve recycling of materials in many countries in the world. The model may be also used for different applications where public participation can contribute like community efforts, taking care of public areas, helping elderly people and more.