Two Shades of (Warm) Glow: multidimensional intrinsic motivation, waste reduction and recycling

Although waste minimization is considered a priority to face the waste problem, EU targets on waste prevention are very recent and most policy interventions have been oriented towards increasing recycling rates. As a result, signi?cant improvements in recycling performance have been attained, but there is still no clear evidence of increased waste prevention. A possible explanation of different trends in waste minimization and recycling rates may be found in the existence of interactions between the two waste related behaviors as well as between policies and households?personal motivations. The aim of the paper is to investigate both theoretically and empirically the impact of waste policies on recycling and prevention decisions of individuals. In the theoretical analysis, we model the role played by policies, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in affecting waste decisions by explicitly allowing for complementarities or substitutabilities between recycling and waste reduction efforts in the utility function. Theoretical results suggest that policies, social norms and intrinsic motivations may affect recycling and prevention both directly and indirectly, through their reciprocal interactions. Theoretical predictions are then tested in a structural equation model, by using data for England from the Survey of Public Attitudes and Behaviours toward the Environment (Defra, 2010). Our empirical investigation shows that waste prevention and recycling activities reinforce each other, supporting the existence of complementarities between them. Nevertheless, when we consider also indirect effects among the involved variables, our results suggest that recycling policies may be not very effective in stimulating waste prevention whilst policy measures acting through intrinsic motivations may have stronger impacts.