Anti-Environmental Behavior: Disregard or Lack of Information?

Environmental campaigns are designed to induce a change in human behavior through more environmental friendly actions. However, the main motivations behind an individual environmental behavior are still under debate. We want to investigate if an anti-environmental behavior might depend on some social values (preferences) or a lack of information. We use an original survey conducted by a French Non-profit Organization to assess the effectiveness of its drug recycle policies. We conduct first a probit analysis of the probability that an individual recycle drugs. Then, we exploit a question in the survey where the interviewer provides the information to non recycling respondents on how it works the drugs recycle process. We estimate the difference among non recycling respondents with respect to their intent to change their recycling behavior, once this information is received. We find that the information does not provide an incentive to change the behavior to non recycling respondents with a low degree of environmental awareness, while it has a positive impact for non-recycling respondents with a higher degree of environmental awareness. A better understanding of the motivations behind anti-environmental behavior might help to design more effective environmental campaigns (informative versus persuasive).