Reducing single-use cutlery with green nudges: Evidence from China's food-delivery industry

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: He, Guojun; Pan, Yuhang; Park, Albert; Sawada, Yasuyuki; Tan, Elaine S.
• 署名单位: University of Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong; Peking University; Asian Development Bank; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; University of Tokyo
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-9028
• DOI: 10.1126/science.add9884
• 发表日期: 2023-09-08
• 页码: 1064-+
• 关键词: market experience; ECONOMICS; CHOICE; POLICY; defaults; follow

摘要

Rising consumer demand for online food delivery has increased the consumption of disposable cutlery, leading to plastic pollution worldwide. In this work, we investigate the impact of green nudges on single-use cutlery consumption in China. In collaboration with Alibaba's food-delivery platform, Eleme (which is similar to Uber Eats and DoorDash), we analyzed detailed customer-level data and found that the green nudges-changing the default to no cutlery and rewarding consumers with green points-increased the share of no-cutlery orders by 648%. The environmental benefits are sizable: If green nudges were applied to all of China, more than 21.75 billion sets of single-use cutlery could be saved annually, equivalent to preventing the generation of 3.26 million metric tons of plastic waste and saving 5.44 million trees.