The objective of this study, which is starting in 2020, is to contribute to the design of policies to reduce marine plastic pollution, by assessing the preferences of households and the welfare effects of alternative policies. In particular, we explore whether households prefer behavioral, command and control or marked-based instruments, and whether they would be more supportive of policies that either tackle only single-use plastic or that have a comprehensive effort at plastic waste beneficiation.
In order to produce results that truly capture the developing country context, we will run choice experiments in nine, highly different developing countries: Costa Rica, South Africa, Vietnam, China, India, Ghana, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. These countries are heterogeneous in terms of population density and waste management, to name a few dissimilarities, but do have similar characteristics in terms of weak institutions and enforcement mechanisms.
