IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/idb/brikps/9827.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reducing Air Pollution through Behavioral Change of Wood-Stove Users: Evidence from an RCT in Valdivia, Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Ruiz-Tagle V., Cristóbal
  • Schueftan, Alejandra

Abstract

Ambient air pollution is a serious problem in cities in south-central Chile because of massive combustion of wood as fuel for residential heating. To reduce air pollution emissions, Chile’s environmental authority has implemented a large-scale program consisting of replacing old, highly polluting residential wood stoves with new, less polluting ones. However, to extend burning time and save on wood fuel expenditures, users tend to dramatically constrain the air flow in these new wood stoves, which creates a highly polluting combustion process. To address this issue a behavioral intervention was designed to provide users with feedback on their wood stoves’ air pollution emissions. The intervention consists of a metallic sign that aligns with the wood stoves damper lever and that informs users of the level of pollution emissions according to the chosen setting of the wood stove’s damper. To assess the effectiveness of this information sign, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is conducted in selected households in the city of Valdivia, Chile. Results from this intervention show that the information sign induced a behavioral change in wood stove users that translates into a 17.3 percent reduction in residential pollution emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruiz-Tagle V., Cristóbal & Schueftan, Alejandra, 2019. "Reducing Air Pollution through Behavioral Change of Wood-Stove Users: Evidence from an RCT in Valdivia, Chile," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 9827, Inter-American Development Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:idb:brikps:9827
    DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0001894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Reducing_Air_Pollution_through_Behavioral_Change_of_Wood-Stove_Users_Evidence_from_an_RCT_in_Valdivia_Chile_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0001894?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Evangelina Dardati & Ramiro de Elejalde & Eugenio Giolito, 2024. "On the short‐term impact of pollution: The effect of PM 2.5 on emergency room visits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 482-508, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Field experiment; Environment and development; Air pollution; Wood stoves;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    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:idb:brikps:9827. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Felipe Herrera Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iadbbus.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.