A study by the Department of Psychology of the University of BC says that recycling rates in BC and Alberta could improve if people who return the containers could choose between claiming the deposit of 10 cents or, instead, having a small opportunity to earn $ 1,000.
“Often, when we are seeing a reward as small as 10 cents, people really don’t care too much and prefer to have that biggest opportunity for a greater reward,” said Jade Radke, a doctoral student from UBC and the main author of the study.
“We have more emotion with those things, greater hope. It’s like playing the lottery. You also do it for fun a bit.”
Research work, Probabilistic reimbursements increase the recycling behavior of drink containers in British Columbia and Alberta, It was published in the latest version of Waste Management and in Jiaying Zhou Co -authorship of UBC, who is known for his studies on the behavior and reduction of waste.
The findings occur when the waste continues to drown the landfills or end up as a litter despite the sophisticated recycling programs in places like Canada.
The information of the World Economic Forum and the International Aluminum Institute say that about two billion beverage containers are produced worldwide each year, but only 34 percent of glass bottles, 40 percent of plastic bottles and 70 percent of aluminum cans are recycled.
Radke and Zhou of UBC, together with the student Stella Arongopoulos and Professor Elizabeth Dunn, devised experiments in the food courts and at a food festival in Albert get $ 1,000.
More than a quarter of the respondents in a part of the study chose the bet of $ 1,000, the most selected option of the options, and reported greater anticipated happiness.
Ten cents per container. That is the deposit that recovers if it returns a can of drinks or is bottled to a deposit in BC, but would you choose a small opportunity to earn $ 1,000 for the guaranteed money? As Chad Pawson reports, a new article outside the Psychology Department of the University of BC says that adding a lottery system option to container yields could increase happiness and recycling rates.
In general, his study found that “a probabilistic refund is preferred on the certain reimbursement with the same expected reward, is associated with an immediate impulse in anticipated happiness and can increase recycling behavior.”
The choice of recycling lottery is something that has been in force in Norway since 1997. Combined with strong environmental values and the convenient locations of recycling machines in the country, the choice of the lottery is contributing to the recycling rate of total Norway drink containers of 96.7 percent, the authors of the UBC study said.
In BC and Alberta, the same rates are 79.6 percent and 84.9 percent, respectively, according to the UBC study, turning them into leaders within Canada.
The authors of the study are working with the provincial return-IT systems to study more the lottery option and determine if it could be implemented to obtain recycling rates along with those of Norway.
“Adding a probabilistic refund option could close the gap,” said Radke.
Would Binners bet?
Something that the study did not consider is what impact a lottery option would have on people who return income containers for income, known people in Vancouver as binners.
The authors of the newspaper said they plan to include them in future work.
However, Jutta Gutberlet, of the community -based research laboratory of the University of Victoria, has studied Binners for 20 years, and said that his activities are a late way of gaining wages.
“The first motivation is economical,” he said, adding that it is not clear if they would select a lottery option in their large volume of yields over the 10 cents guaranteed by article.
Gutberlet said his research generally discovered that binners would prefer a higher deposit, such as 25 cents, to make the containers more valuable and reflected, “the work and also the environmental contribution to return these materials to the circular economy.”
