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

The aim of this project is to investigate the role of social norms, convenience, and economic incentives in recycling in cities. We will propose policies that will promote pro-environmental behaviour in urban areas. Sweden is a frontrunner in recycling and urban sustainability. Identifying obstacles and success factors here will benefit other countries.

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.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. It is composed of four related work packages (WP).

WP1 studies how people decide how much they recycle and how social norms and accessibility to recycling centers influence their recycling behaviour.

WP2 investigates how the introduction of the weight-based tariff in Sweden affects people’s behaviour with respect to other recycling options.

WP3 tests whether an information intervention (in collaboration with Uppsalahem) can be effective in promoting recycling of municipal waste. WP4 integrates the knowledge generated in previous WP and summarizes the main insights.