Publications

This paper provides a review of economic studies that analyse the use of multiple policies to cope with waste management problems. In this paper, we discuss the factors that influence selective sorting behaviour and the most appropriate policies for their promotion. The evolution of regulation shows that few constraints are placed on producers' behaviour and suggests that consumers will become strategic actors to achieve regulatory objectives. Our survey shows, through various analysed works, the originality of waste as an environmental problem to regulate. This traditional approach that decisions respond to rational behaviour, particularly cost savings, has its limits. Although not all public policies seem justified, we argue that specific policies for promoting recycling may be required, preferably based on the provision of information to consumers or on behavioural instruments. Indeed, personal factors specific to each individual – such as emotions and the influence of social interaction – should be taken into account in the development of public policies. For each rationale, the relevant literature is presented. Based on the review, avenues for future research are identified.


Our article aims at understanding the determinants of households’ selective waste-sorting behaviours, based on data from an original survey of 694 individuals in the French Provence–Alpes–Côte d’Azur region. The applied literature focuses mainly on countries with high recycling rates. We focus on a region with the lowest recycling rate in France, a country that recycles less than the European country average. We first apply polychoric principal components analysis to reduce the number of explanatory variables to a set of six factors. In a second step, we use a probit model to estimate the probability of waste sorting as a function of these factors. This model tests several hypotheses emerging from the recent literature on behavioural economics applied to households’ selective sorting. This literature pays particular attention to the social influence on recycling behaviour, which has been studied mostly by sociologists and psychologists. The results of our empirical analysis confirm some of the findings in the literature. However, they also highlight some unique features, such as social influences having a negative impact on recycling. This finding contrasts with most of the literature, which finds a positive relationship of social influence on pro-environmental behaviour


Many economists and psychologists have studied the impact of nudges on households' pro-environmental behaviors. Interestingly, "private nudges" can be imagined for companies. Yet, studies focusing on nudging employees' energy use are rare. The objective of our paper is to explore this issue with the help of a field experiment conducted at 47 French companies' sites. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, the effects of three nudges on employees' energy conservation are tested. The first nudge, "moral appeal", stresses the responsible use of energy. The second one, "social comparison", informs employees on the energy consumption of other firms participating in the experiment. Finally, the third nudge, "stickers", alerts employees about good energy conservation practices. Our results stress the complementarity of these nudges. When implemented alone, the three nudges have no significant effects on energy consumption. However, when the moral appeal and social comparison nudges are combined with the stickers nudge, they become effective.


An important strand in the economic literature focuses on how to provide the right incentives for households to recycle their waste. This work includes a growing number of studies, inspired by psychology, that seek to explain waste sorting and pro-environmental behavior, more generally, and which highlight the importance of social approval and the peer effect. The present theoretical work explores these issues.

We propose a model that considers heterogeneous households that choose to recycle, based on three main household characteristics: their environmental preferences, the opportunity costs of their tax expenditure, and their reputation. The model is original in depicting the interactions among households, which enable them to form beliefs about recycling and allow them to assess their reputation. These interactions are explored through the model simulations. We highlight how individual recycling decisions depend on these interactions and how the effectiveness of public policies related to recycling is affected by a crowding-out effect. The model simulations consider three complementary policies: provision of incentives to recycle through taxation; provision of information on the importance of selective sorting; and an ‘individualized’ approach that takes the form of a ‘nudge’. We use the results of the simulations to quantify the consequences of the crowding-out effect on total residual waste.


In this article we investigate and compare the effect of a collective sanction (namely, an increase of the tax burden) with a recommendation, both from a third-party, in a public good game “à la Andreoni [1993]” where crowding-out is possible. Furthermore, we test for the correlation between the incentives and the social orientation of subjects on cooperation by using a social value orientation (SVO) test. Our results show that, in general, the sanction is more powerful than the recommendation but also that the threat of punishment has a disciplinary impact by enhancing cooperation. Moreover, we show that both sanction and its threat have a different impact according to the social orientation of subjects: contrary to individualists and competitors, prosocials are not significantly sensitive to both.