Contextual behavioral informed nudges to stimulate waste prevention and recycling. A framework and a research agenda

Waste prevention and recycling have gained a focal position in the research agendas of scholars and policy makers. By drawing links between economics and psychology, Behavioral Economics (BE) offers a useful framework to stimulate benign individual decisions and choices in this field, by stressing the role of human factors in shaping them. Two distinct approaches can be identified, differing in how they conceptualize the putative independent variables that govern human behavior: 1) cognitive models and 2) behavioral-oriented models. The extant experimental literature, however, has not satisfactorily developed this twofold perspective in the analysis of possible nudging strategies to encourage waste prevention and recycling. Building on this research gap, the paper highlights the limitations of the current cognitive-based framework and explores the potential for extending the application of a contextual behavioral approach within this field of study. We propose a research agenda centered on integrating contextual behavioral tools into nudging interventions, identifying two main benefits arising from such an innovative approach: (i) a wider adoption of value-based actions, (ii) a mitigation of the decay of the nudging effect in the long term. These "contextual behavioral informed nudges" could be especially effective in situations involving a trade-off between health and environmental protection.