Increasing recycling with charitable incentives

Many businesses have moved toward a circular economy, collecting their packaging material from customers to be reintroduced into their remanufacturing processes. For these programs to be successful, individuals must voluntarily, and often effortfully, dispose of their used materials in specific ways. The goal of the present research is to evaluate the effectiveness of charitable incentives in promoting effortful recycling. We explore whether the type of charitable recipient – human or non-human – differently promotes effortful recycling, and examine how people's environmental values may moderate these effects. Five studies (N = 3572) utilizing real disposal decisions and consequential disposal intentions demonstrate that when individuals are informed that by recycling an item a donation will be made to a non-profit organization, effortful recycling increases—an effect that is observed for both environmental and youth recipients (Studies 1–4b). However, an environmental charitable recipient was less motivating for people who had less concern for the environment (Studies 3 and 4b). We find that an environmental charitable recipient increases effortful recycling because of an enhanced perception of making an impact, while a youth charitable recipient increases effortful recycling through greater empathy (Studies 4a and 4b). We conclude that efforts to increase material recovery using charitable incentives can be effective, and should carefully consider the values of their intended audience along with charitable recipient type.