Increasing Household Waste Segregation Rates in the Presence of a Segregated Collection Service: A Randomized Controlled Trial in India
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2026 · Shivani Wadehra、Zihan Nie、Francisco Alpízar
Abstract
Proper waste management is an increasingly important challenge in developing countries, and waste segregation at source is a critical step towards greater efficiency and smaller environmental impacts. This paper 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.