On the design of sustainable cities: recycling, social norms and economic policies

We investigate social norms, convenience, and economic incentives in recycling in cities. Based on this, we will propose policies to promote pro-environmental behaviour in urban areas. We will also investigate how recycling behavior affects and interacts with other environmentally friendly behaviours in urban environments, such as energy saving, transport modes, or sustainable food consumption.

Sweden is a frontrunner in recycling and urban sustainability. Identifying obstacles and success factors here, will also benefit other countries. We will also investigate how recycling behavior affects and interacts with other environmentally friendly behaviours.

The project is multidisciplinary, combining environmental policy, behavioural economics and environmental psychology. We employ a wide range of participatory quantitative and qualitative methods such as stakeholder workshops, social network modeling, econometrics, and field experiments, co-designed with the local municipally-owned housing company Uppsalahem.

In the different work packages, we will study how people decide how much they recycle and how social norms and accessibility to recycling centers influence their recycling behaviour; how the introduction of the weight-based tariff in Sweden affects people’s behaviour with respect to other recycling options; whether an information intervention can be effective in promoting recycling of municipal waste.

Project members:

Efthymia Kyriakopoulou (PI), Jens Rommel from Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Therese Lindahl from Beijer Institute,

 

Funding:

Formas