Counterproductive norms can be addressed via informational interventions: The Case of ‘Wishcycling’

Abstract

Social norms are integral to human prosociality, but can also lead to ineffective or even counter- productive “prosocial” behaviors. In this paper, we provide an example of one such counter-productive norm, and demonstrate how simple informational interventions can improve behavior. Study 1 shows that among those who recycle, people with stronger prosocial concerns about sustainability are actually worse recyclers — they err on the side of recycling an item when they unsure if it should be recycled or sent to landfill, and say they would recycle items that are not recyclable. Such ‘aspirational’ recycling leads to contamination of the recycling stream, increasing the cost of recycling, sometimes to the point that entire batches of recyclable materials are sent to landfill. Unlike traditional public goods problems, this challenge appears to result from lack of information rather than lack of prosocial motivation. Study 2 therefore introduces and tests a simple informational intervention designed to address this counterpro- ductive behavior. Relative to a placebo and a pure control, our intervention significantly reduces the share of respondents who recycle items when they are unsure if they are recyclable, and reduces the number of non-recyclable items that participants say they would recycle. Our findings highlight the importance of unambiguous instructions on how to behave prosocially for effectively promoting public goods.