Increasing Household Waste Segregation Rates in the Presence of a Segregated Collection Service: A Randomized Controlled Trial in India

Shivani Wadehra, Zihan Nie and Francisco Alpízar

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2026, vol. 13, issue 6, 1465 - 1502

Abstract: Proper waste management is an increasingly important challenge in developing countries, and waste segregation at source is a critical step toward greater efficiency and smaller environmental impacts. This study presents the results of a field experiment in India, examining whether and how a household campaign can change households’ waste segregation behavior in the presence of a reliable segregated collection service. The campaign has two variants: (1) a one-shot household campaign providing an information brochure and a bucket and (2) the same one-shot campaign enhanced by weekly reminders. We find that, with a reliable collection service in place, a household campaign providing information brochures and buckets increases the waste segregation rate by 45 percentage points, and the “campaign plus reminders” treatment increases the segregation rate by 60 percentage points. We show that a low-cost, soft-touch household campaign can quickly and significantly increase waste segregation when a reliable segregated collection service exists.

Date: 2026
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