How can residents be motivated to participate in waste recycling? An analysis based on two survey experiments in China

Waste recycling constitutes an important part of sustainable municipal eco-management, but the chronic and enduring problem in China is how to motivate residents to participate. Although previous research has found that persuasive incentives can exert a powerful influence on people's pro-environmental behavior, little work placed much emphasis on the effect of various incentives and make a comparison. The moderating role of social norms in indigenous scene is also ignored. The present research attempts to tackle this issue to explore theoretically the black box of China's policy implementation. We conducted two survey experiments online in China from February 28 to April 25, 2021. The results in experiment 1 show that four incentives significantly affect respondents' disposition toward recycling behavior, of which monetary incentive is the most effective strategy and the order of the rest incentives is environmental framing incentive, institutional incentive and moral incentive according to the effect calculated by the model. Furthermore, experiment 2 finds that social norms positively moderate the nexus between incentives and recycling behavior, and descriptive norms play a more significant role than injunctive norms. Finally, implications for public policy and limitations are discussed.