Environmental Concerns and the Perceived Effectiveness of Fines and Incentives in Municipal Waste Management

Abstract

Survey responses to environmental policy instruments may capture perceived behavioral effectiveness rather than abstract normative approval. This paper examines how environmental concern and information channels are associated with the selection of fines and incentives as measures that could encourage more frequent separate waste collection. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) Aspects of Daily Life survey for 2017-2022, we distinguish between global/collective-oriented concern and local/proximate concern and between one-way media information and interpersonal information. The two outcomes are nonexclusive selections within a multiple-response survey battery. We estimate a bivariate probit model for the two binary outcomes and complement it with a multinomial specification that exploits the multiple-response structure of the survey item. The results show that both global/collective-oriented concern and local/proximate concern are positively associated with the endorsement of the two instruments, but global/collective-oriented concern is consistently the stronger correlate. These outcomes concern perceived effectiveness within the survey context and should not be interpreted as direct measures of political approval or policy legitimacy.