Compare households’ recycling habits to their neighbors

Give households feedback on their recycling pattern and use social norms to compare their pattern to their neighborhood’s.

Behavioral Tool: Feedback, Social Norms

Benchmarked Intervention

Experiment Overview

An experiment was conducted in California across 650 households to increase recycling using feedback, social norms and personalisation. The experiment had 3 treatment arms: (i) residents were given feedback about their recycling habits; (ii) residents were given feedback and dynamic social norms information such as the percentage of households recycling and their participation behavior; (iii) residents were given information about the type of materials that can be recycled. The control group that did not receive any intervention.

Impact

Source: Schultz, P. W. (1999). Changing behavior with normative feedback interventions: A field experiment on curbside recycling. Basic and applied social psychology, 21(1), 25-36.