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This paper tests whether visual nudges help direct attention towards existing instructions designed to increase waste sorting accuracy. The study was conducted in a quasi-experimental setting over a period of 9 weeks in two buildings of a large UK university campus. Two treatments on recycling behaviour were tested against a control group: one considered the impact of visual nudges in the form of human eyes; the other one combined human eye with pre-existing sorting instructions. Results show that for mixed recycling the combination of visual and information nudges decreased sorting errors by 7 percentage points. In contrast, visual nudges alone increased sorting errors by 4.5 percentage points. These findings indicate that, when combined, information and a visual nudge are cost-effective tools to significantly improve waste sorting behaviour. This paper adds to existing experimental evidence based on neuroscientific theories.

This paper aims to test whether visual nudges help improving attention towards existing instructions to increase waste sorting accuracy. The study was conducted in a quasi-experimental setting over a period of 8 weeks in two buildings of a large UK university campus. Two treatments were tested against a control group: one considered the impact of visual nudges in the form of human eyes on recycling behaviour; the other one combined human eye with pre-existing sorting instructions. Results show that the combination of visual and information nudges decreased sorting errors by 7 percentage points. By contrast, visual nudges alone increased sorting error by 4.5 percentage points. These findings prove that, when combined, information and a visual nudge are cost-effective tools to improve sorting behaviour with strong efficacy, bringing new evidence to experiments based on neuroscientific theories. Behavioural Economics, Recycling, Neuroscience, Nudges

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