Morals, money or the master: The adoption of eco-friendly reusable bags

Morals, money or the master: The adoption of eco-friendly reusable bags

INTERNATIONAL MARINE LITTER DATABASE

Morals, money or the master: The adoption of eco-friendly reusable bags

Roger Spranz, Achim Schlüter, Björn Vollan,

Morals, money or the master: The adoption of eco-friendly reusable bags, Marine Policy, 2018,

ISSN 0308-597X,

Abstract:

Plastic pollution is rampant in oceans across the globe. Our
project in Indonesia seeks to understand and measure the effectiveness
of non-monetary interventions that can help to reduce plastic bag
consumption. A natural field experiment with 60 local shops was set up
and three different persuasion strategies to measure shop owners’
likelihood to participate and sell them to customers were applied. In
all treatment conditions the reusable bags were offered to the shop
owners at a subsidized price along with explanations about the harm
plastic bags do to the environment. Additionally and according to their
randomly assigned treatment, they got either information activating a
pro-environmental social norm (arguing that distributing the reusable
bags helps support the wellbeing of their society); Indirect monetary
incentive (arguing that their business can save money by reducing the
amount of free plastic bags) or; authority endorsements (the head of the
village showing his support of the idea to distribute the reusable
bags). Our results support the conjecture that local leaders play an
important role in the Indonesian context.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AdwURlTkyJor4cYybkADC8rkqVhylkCp

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2018.01.029.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X17304852)