The Can Challenge: Understanding the best ways to incentivise recycling through a diffusion approach

Brock, Michael, Murgia, Lucia M., Sitzia, Stefania and Zheng, Jiwei (2026) The Can Challenge: Understanding the best ways to incentivise recycling through a diffusion approach. Ecological Economics. ISSN 0921-8009 (In Press)

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Abstract

Understanding the best ways to incentivise recycling and improve the efficiency of waste practices is a key environmental, social, and economic management problem that needs addressing. We search for solutions to this issue by testing the effectiveness of two incentive mechanisms (a piece-rate and a lottery-based system). We run a similar field experiment in three different locations, namely a student, residential, and workplace environment, to verify the robustness of our findings and thus increase confidence in the external validity of our intervention. By interpreting recycling activity as a marketable service, we employ a diffusion model to analyse the potential adoption of the service. We find that monetary rewards increase recycling levels in almost all locations, independently of the type of incentive. More specifically, incentivising recycling stimulates action by those on lower incomes through opportunities for income generation. By contrast, those in workplace environments engage with or without incentives, but the latter provides a boost. Diffusion seems to exist in each environment, but with differing levels of success. Our study contributes to the literature by providing evidence on how to best increase public involvement through recycling and offering important insights for policy making to address this worldwide relevant issue.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	recycling behaviour,field experiment,monetary incentives,bass diffusion model
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Environment, Resources and Conflict
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	12 Feb 2026 13:30
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2026 13:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101930
DOI:	issn:0921-8009

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