Effectiveness of interventions to induce waste segregation by households: evidence from a randomized controlled trial in Mozambique
Abstract
The City Council of Maputo (CMM) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) began a pilot project to introduce segregated waste discharge in households and its collection in a suburb of Maputo City, Mozambique, in 2014. After an initial rollout of the program showed low household-level compliance with the new waste segregation requirements, CMM and JICA conducted a randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate potential measures to induce more cooperation from households. The study was a parallel group comparison with three interventions (i.e., household goods exchange, segregation buckets provision, and periodic home visit instruction). In total, 1000 target households (sample size of 250 households for each group) were randomly allocated out of 1817 eligible households in the target area. The analysis found each applied intervention to be effective, the households with interventions were 7.5–10.6% points more likely to segregate the waste compared with the control group (significant at 1% level), and 267.4–386.1 g/households/2 weeks of target recyclables was incrementally discharged from the intervention groups, while that of the control group was 25.57 g/household/2 weeks (significant at 1–10% levels). However, cost-effectiveness of the pilot project and the applied interventions was low when compared with the other recycling pilot projects attempted in the project.
Keywords
Randomized controlled trial Impact evaluation Waste segregation Recycling Cost-effectivenessNotes
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Supplementary material
References
- 1.Instituto Nacional de Estatística (2010) Projecções anuais da população total, urbana e rural, dos distritos da Cidade de Maputo 2007–2040. Instituto Nacional de Estatística, MaputoGoogle Scholar
- 2.International Monetary Fund (2014) World economic outlook database. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/02/weodata/index.aspx. Accessed 22 July 2016
- 3.Directorate for Waste Management and Cemeteries, City Council of Maputo City (2017) (Draft) master plan on urban solid waste management in Maputo City. The City Council of Maputo CityGoogle Scholar
- 4.Japan International Cooperation Agency (2015) JICA strategy paper on solid waste management. Japan International Cooperation Agency, TokyoGoogle Scholar
- 5.Website of international initiative for impact evaluation (3ie). http://www.3ieimpact.org/en/. Accessed 22 July 2016
- 6.Chong Alberto et al (2015) (Ineffective) messages to encourage recycling: evidence from a randomized evaluation in Peru. World Bank Econ Rev 29(1):180–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 7.Cotterill S et al (2009) Mobilizing citizen effort to enhance environmental outcomes: a randomized controlled trial of a door-to-door recycling campaign. J Environ Manag 91(2):403–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 8.Timlett RE et al (2008) Public participation and recycling performance in England: a comparison of tools for behaviour change. Resour Conserv Recycl 52(2008):622–634CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 9.Instituto Nacional de Estatística (2015) Relatório final do inquérito ao orçamento familiar—IOF 2014/15. Instituto Nacional de Estatística, MaputoGoogle Scholar
- 10.Datta Saugato et al (2014) Behavioral design: a new approach to development policy. Rev Income Wealth 60(1):7–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 11.Nippon Koei Co., Ltd. (2013) The project for promotion of sustainable 3R activities in Maputo—progress report 1. Japan International Cooperation Agency, TokyoGoogle Scholar