Recycling behavior of private households: an empirical investigation of individual preferences in a club good experiment
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Recycling behavior of private households: an empirical investigation of individual preferences in a club good experiment Roland Menges1 · Janis Cloos1 · Matthias Greiff1 · Jacob Wehrle1 · Daniel Goldmann2 · Lisa Rabe2 Received: 7 January 2020 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract While recycling helps to limit the use of primary resources, it also requires considerable technological investments in regional circular flow systems. The effectiveness of recycling systems, however, also depends on household behavior. Therefore, cur‑ rent research increasingly focuses on behavioral and psychological theories of altruism, moral behavior, and social prefer‑ ences. From an economic perspective, recycling systems can be understood as public goods with contributions resulting in positive externalities. In this context, the literature shows that recycling behavior highly depends on the perception of how others behave. In neutrally framed public good experiments, contributions tend to increase when alternative public goods are offered and group identity is generated. We aim to contribute to this discussion by observing household behavior concerning recycling opportunities in controlled settings. For this purpose, we study a laboratory experiment in which individuals con‑ tribute to recycling systems: At first, only one public recycling system (public good) is offered. After dividing societies into two clubs, “high” and “low” according to their environmental attitudes, excludable club systems (club goods) are added as alternative recycling options for each club. The results of our pilot experiment show that adding a more exclusive recycling club option increases individual contributions to recycling compared with a pure public good framework. However, this increase in cooperation is only significant for those clubs where members with higher environmental attitudes are pooled.
* Jacob Wehrle jacob.wehrle@tu‑clausthal.de 1
Institute of Management and Economics, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal‑Zellerfeld, Germany
Institute of Mineral and Waste Processing, Waste Disposal and Geomechanics, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal‑Zellerfeld, Germany
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Graphic abstract
Keywords Experimental economics · Recycling · Recycling policy · External effects · Public goods · Club goods
Introduction In recent years, the intensification of industrial recycling activities and the improvement of the associated circular economy networks have become an essential area of envi‑ ronmental policy. Recycling does not only help to reduce the environmental costs caused by waste, but can also be used specifically by industrial policy to reduce certain short‑ ages of raw materials, as in the case of rare elements that are used in mobile phones. In addition, recycling can be used to reduce the carbon footprint of consumption activi‑ ties, helping to mitigate the required space and emissions from landfills all around the world. In this paper, we us
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