Does teaching school children about recycling reduce household waste?

Claes Ek () and Magnus Söderberg
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Claes Ek: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG, Sweden

No 783, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Reduced waste generation is a prioritized environmental policy objective in the EU as well as worldwide. We perform a randomized controlled trial in Sweden with school children aged 10-16 to evaluate an intervention designed to reduce household waste, Environmental Education Programs (EEP). Crucially, we are able to examine the causal effect of a wastethemed EEP on the actual waste generated in households where a child was treated. This is done by coupling the addresses of participating students with high-resolution address-level panel data on collected waste amounts, supplied by municipal waste authorities. Our design allows identifcation of the differential effect of the EEP on waste generation in treated versus control households. We fnd no signifcant evidence that the intervention had any effect on waste generation. There is also no indication that this null result is due to interference between treated and control students.

Keywords: Field experiments; Environmental Education Programs; household waste; intergenerational learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 I21 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-env and nep-exp
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