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Social pressure, information, and recycling: Experimental evidence from Lebanon
Kristin Kao, University of Gothenberg
Salma Mousa, Yale University
Abstract: Can social pressure encourage citizens to take costly action for the environment? 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 0.3 out of 5 stars (~11% 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%). A survey of the city’s residents explores mechanisms driving these effects. These results suggest that social pressure, combined with knowledge on how to comply, can boost environmentally-conscious behaviors – even against the backdrop of economic and political crisis.