AUTHOR=Andersson Sara , Söderholm Patrik , Berglund Christer TITLE=The mixed blessing of responsibility relief: An application to household recycling and curbside waste collection JOURNAL=Frontiers in Environmental Economics VOLUME=1 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-economics/articles/10.3389/frevc.2022.1081926 DOI=10.3389/frevc.2022.1081926 ISSN=2813-2823 ABSTRACT=
This paper addresses the role of personal norms and warm glow in influencing households' waste recycling preferences. The purpose is to explore inter-household differences in the preferences toward the introduction of curbside recycling, which implies that households are relieved from the responsibility of transporting sorted waste to assigned drop-off stations. The main theoretical point of departure for the analysis is an existing model that integrates norm-motivated behavior into neoclassical utility theory. This builds on the assumption that the household members have preferences for upholding a self-image as responsible—norm-compliant—persons, and it also contains a warm-glow component. The empirical investigation relies on a postal survey to households in a Swedish municipality, and this asks households about their willingness-to-pay (