IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4753.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Power of a Bad Example - A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Dur
  • Ben Vollaard

Abstract

Field-experimental studies have shown that people litter more in more littered environments. Inspired by these findings, many cities around the world have adopted policies to quickly remove litter. While such policies may prevent people from following the bad example of litterers, they may also invite free-riding on public cleaning services. We are the first to show that both forces are at play. We conduct a natural field experiment where, in a randomly assigned part of a residential area, the frequency of cleaning was drastically reduced during a three-month period. We find evidence that some people start to clean up after themselves when public cleaning services are diminished. However, the tendency to litter more dominates. We also find that these responses continue to exist for some time after the treatment has ended.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Dur & Ben Vollaard, 2014. "The Power of a Bad Example - A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal," CESifo Working Paper Series 4753, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4753
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4753.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engel, Christoph & Beckenkamp, Martin & Glöckner, Andreas & Irlenbusch, Bernd & Hennig-Schmidt, Heike & Kube, Sebastian & Kurschilgen, Michael & Morell, Alexander & Nicklisch, Andreas & Normann, Hans-, 2014. "First impressions are more important than early intervention: Qualifying broken windows theory in the lab," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 126-136.
    2. Marianne Bertrand & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2000. "Network Effects and Welfare Cultures," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 1019-1055.
    3. Nyborg, Karine & Rege, Mari, 2003. "Does Public Policy Crowd Out Private Contributions to Public Goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 115(3-4), pages 397-418, June.
    4. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004. "Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" in a Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1717-1722, December.
    5. Gerlinde Fellner & Rupert Sausgruber & Christian Traxler, 2013. "Testing Enforcement Strategies In The Field: Threat, Moral Appeal And Social Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 634-660, June.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    7. Anderson, Siwan & Francois, Patrick, 1997. "Environmental Cleanliness as a Public Good: Welfare and Policy Implications of Nonconvex Preferences," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 256-274, November.
    8. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    9. Martin, Richard & Randal, John, 2008. "How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 228-238, July.
    10. Christoph Engel & Sebastian Kube & Michael Kurschilgen, 2011. "Can we manage first impressions in cooperation problems? An experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2011_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised May 2014.
    11. Roberto Burlando & Francesco Guala, 2005. "Heterogeneous Agents in Public Goods Experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 35-54, April.
    12. Bruno Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004. "In a field experiment," Natural Field Experiments 00243, The Field Experiments Website.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vollaard, Ben, 2015. "Temporal Displacement of Environmental Crime : Evidence from Marine Oil Pollution," Other publications TiSEM 6bbaaff7-4d6f-4c9e-987b-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Jacoba M. M. Viljoen & Catherina J. Schenck & Liza Volschenk & Phillip F. Blaauw & Lizette Grobler, 2021. "Household Waste Management Practices and Challenges in a Rural Remote Town in the Hantam Municipality in the Northern Cape, South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-24, May.
    3. Henning Best & Thorsten Kneip, 2019. "Assessing the Causal Effect of Curbside Collection on Recycling Behavior in a Non-randomized Experiment with Self-reported Outcome," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(4), pages 1203-1223, April.
    4. Gionata Castaldi & Grazia Cecere & Mariangela Zoli, 2021. "“Smoke on the beach”: on the use of economic vs behavioral policies to reduce environmental pollution by cigarette littering," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(3), pages 1025-1048, October.
    5. Stefano Carattini & Simon Levin & Alessandro Tavoni, 2019. "Cooperation in the Climate Commons," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 13(2), pages 227-247.
    6. Dur, Robert & Vollaard, Ben, 2019. "Salience of law enforcement: A field experiment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 208-220.
    7. Vollaard, Ben, 2017. "Temporal displacement of environmental crime: Evidence from marine oil pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 168-180.
    8. Vollaard, Ben, 2015. "Temporal Displacement of Environmental Crime : Evidence from Marine Oil Pollution," Other publications TiSEM ecd1f718-05f7-43cd-b237-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Vollaard, Ben, 2017. "Temporal displacement of environmental crime : Evidence from marine oil pollution," Other publications TiSEM 145e8cf6-0af4-41d8-a6ce-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Ruggero Rangoni & Wander Jager, 2017. "Social Dynamics of Littering and Adaptive Cleaning Strategies Explored Using Agent-Based Modelling," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 20(2), pages 1-1.
    11. O'Garra, Tanya & Alfredo, Katherine A., 2018. "Communication, Observability and Cooperation: a Field Experiment on Collective Water Management in India," SocArXiv bsg75, Center for Open Science.
    12. Marius PETRESCU & Ionica ONCIOIU & Anca-Gabriela PETRESCU & Florentina-Raluca BÎLCAN & Mihai PETRESCU & Dumitru-Alexandru STOICA, 2021. "Estimating the Dynamics of Household Waste Management in Turkey," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 129-143, June.
    13. Riehm, Tobias & Fugger, Nicolas & Gillen, Philippe & Gretschko, Vitali & Werner, Peter, 2021. "Social norms and market behavior: Evidence from a large population sample," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-017, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2013. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (Revision of CentER DP 2013-018)," Other publications TiSEM 05a8bfd3-2cbb-40e3-adc1-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2013. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (Revision of TILEC DP 2013-006)," Other publications TiSEM 09b384df-9e66-4a3f-8126-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2012. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (replaced by TILEC DP 2013-006)," Other publications TiSEM ea9c4972-5447-41d7-ad3e-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2013. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (Revision of TILEC DP 2013-006)," Discussion Paper 2013-018, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    5. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2013. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (Revision of CentER DP 2013-018)," Discussion Paper 2013-037, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    6. Dur, R. & Vollaard, B.A., 2012. "The Power of a Bad Example – A Field Experiment in Household Garbage Disposal (replaced by TILEC DP 2013-006)," Discussion Paper 2012-024, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    7. Simon Gaechter, 2006. "Conditional cooperation: Behavioral regularities from the lab and the field and their policy implications," Discussion Papers 2006-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    8. Biddle, Nicholas & Fels, Katja M. & Sinning, Mathias, 2018. "Behavioral insights on business taxation: Evidence from two natural field experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 30-49.
    9. Julia Blasch & Mehdi Farsi, 2012. "Retail demand for voluntary carbon offsets - A choice experiment among Swiss consumers," IED Working paper 12-18, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
    10. Biddle, Nicholas & Fels, Katja & Sinning, Mathias, 2017. "Behavioral insights and business taxation: Evidence from two randomized controlled trials," Ruhr Economic Papers 698, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Borgloh, Sarah & Dannenberg, Astrid & Aretz, Bodo, 2013. "Small is beautiful—Experimental evidence of donors’ preferences for charities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 242-244.
    12. Engel, Christoph & Kube, Sebastian & Kurschilgen, Michael, 2021. "Managing expectations: How selective information affects cooperation and punishment in social dilemma games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 111-136.
    13. Simon Gächter & Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "The Impact of Social Comparisons on Reciprocity," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(4), pages 1346-1367, December.
    14. Linek, Maximilian & Traxler, Christian, 2021. "Framing and social information nudges at Wikipedia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1269-1279.
    15. Simon Gaechter & Elke Renner, 2014. "Leaders as Role Models for the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Discussion Papers 2014-11, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    16. Dolan, Paul & Metcalfe, Robert, 2013. "Neighbors, knowledge, and nuggets: two natural field experiments on the role of incentives on energy conservation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51563, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Jing Cai & Alain De Janvry & Elisabeth Sadoulet, 2015. "Social Networks and the Decision to Insure," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 81-108, April.
    18. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2018. "Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 321-334.
    19. David Klinowski, 2021. "Reluctant donors and their reactions to social information," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 515-535, June.
    20. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    littering; public services; free-riding; field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4753. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.