Committing to Keep Clean: Nudging Complements Standard Policy Measures to Reduce Illegal Urban Garbage Disposal in a Neighborhood With High Levels of Social Cohesion

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Inge Merkelbach¹  Semiha Denktas¹ 

[1] Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam

关键词: nudging;    garbage disposal;    field experiment;    behavioral insights;    Behavioral Insights Group Rotterdam;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.660410

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Illegal garbage disposals are a persistent urban problem, resulting in high clean-up costs, and nuisance and decreased satisfaction with the neighborhood among residents. We compared three adjacent city-areas in Rotterdam in the Netherlands which, for 2 weeks, either: (1) no action to decrease illegal garbage disposals was taken; (2) standard door-to-door canvassing was carried out; or (3) door-to-door canvassing was enriched with several nudges, most importantly a commitment-nudge. The nudge treatment proved highly effective, reducing illegal disposals at post-test and follow-up (2 months later) with two-thirds, resulting in a very large effect size ( d = 2.60). At post-test, standard door-to-door canvassing did not differ from the control treatment, but at follow-up results were comparable to the nudging-treatment. This could, however, be due to spill-over effects. Using a commitment nudge thus proved highly effective in decreasing illegal garbage disposals, however, effects might be specific to neighborhoods with strong social cohesion.

【 授权许可】

CC BY