Behavioral Insights to Reduce Open Waste Burning in Lao PDR : Behavioral Insights and Policy Options

In order to promote environmentally friendly behaviors, it is fundamental not only to consider and modify already existing infrastructure and facilities, or rethink physical prompts and cues in the environment, but also contemplate and target the cognitive traits inherent to any human being. Sustainable behaviors such as recycling, reusing, and composting are driven by different motivations and beliefs. In the past few decades, scholars have also devoted significant attention to identify and describe major socio-psychological and situational determinants of sustainable behaviors, such as age, gender, cultural background, attitudes, knowledge, motivation, social influence and others. In this report, the authors provide a description of how behavioral science was used to generate insights on factors that influence open burning in the population of Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR). This report will walk the reader through the different phases of the behavioral method applied to open burning in Lao PDR. In the definition phase the behavior is outlined, and the social, psychological, and contextual factors that influence it are studied. In the second phase, an intervention based on the hypotheses is designed. Finally, the intervention is implemented and evaluated in order to adapt the solutions to the current reality of the population