Plastic Waste Recycling and Nudges

51Due教员组今天给各位留学生带来一篇纯原创代写市场范文，讲的是通过塑料产品回收的案例来说明微推的应用。据估计，全世界只有9%的塑料产品被回收利用。希望这篇可以帮助到各位留学生，同时需要代写也可以直接联系我们51Due客服vx（vx：Jenny_dynh）进行咨询。

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics was presented to Professor Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Thaler, who is over 70 years old, is famous for his research on the economics of the human nature. His field of activity, behavioral economics, combines economics and psychology, explaining the human beings that economics cannot explain in terms of psychological theory. After converting to behavioral economics, Thaler is committed to using his own theory to influence the public and change the world. Thaler devoted his life to the popularization and application of behavioral economics in his later years. In 2008, he and Sunstain co-authored a book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, which explained how to use the "nudge" method, to ingeniously guide people to make more rational choices without forcing them. The basic argument is that humans are not completely rational, so policy makers need to do some design and “nudge” citizens to make smarter and more effective choices. Thaler believes that "nudge" is useful because human beings are not completely rational. In this essay, the application of nudges is demonstrated through the case of plastic product recycling. It has been estimated that only 9% of the world’s plastic products are being recycled. All the rest are polluting the environment and entering the oceans, leading to environmental and ecosystem disasters. Through the nudges of default, simplification, and collectivism, the problem of plastic waste recycling can be solved.

In the public domain, people's choices are always carried out in a certain environment, not out of thin air. Because people often use intuitive thinking systems, they are prone to prejudice and often make irrational decisions. In reality, just like the public, the government will also be immersed in irrationality and make absurd choices. Therefore, the government needs to redesign and optimize social public policies. Market failure requires government intervention. The government's intervention in market failure is often referred to as paternalism. In many cases, government intervention not only respects liberalism but also adopts paternalism. It protects both individual freedom and individual choice. It not only allows individuals to feel voluntary in their actions, but also expresses the government’s mandatory intentions. Such an intervention can be called libertarian paternalism. It refers to helping people in real life to make better choices without cancelling their right to choose. This process requires careful design, a process named “choice architecture” by Thaler. The nudges are the specific outcomes of choice architecture that smartly guide people without force or coercion.

People have a default option when faced with a choice. Whether or not it brings real benefits, many people eventually choose it. Currently, the default option of plastic waste recycling is to do nothing. There is no process of selection anyway, which diminishes the importance of recycling in the public. The default option must be set to “recycling” if this situation is to be changed. One possible way of doing so is by household registration into the recycling programs. Families receive a form to fill in their information to facilitate the recycling process. The default option here becomes recycling. If they do not wish to participate in the program, they must file an application to the government and explain the reasons. Under such a choice architecture, the majority of people will fall in line with the default. Automatic registration has proven to be an extremely effective way to increase the proportion of participation. The recommendation and setting the default option are both part of the nudge strategy. From a certain perspective, it is not people's choices, but the rules that are flawed. Most people want to contribute to recycling, but they do not have the option to do so. If the government is concentrating on how to improve the default recycling registrations, it will surely receive unexpected results in plastic recycling.

When faced with diversified choices, it is difficult for people to make the best choice. Then, simplifying the service process can have a positive social effect. For example, the recycling process for plastic products can be tedious for some people. If the government can offer some professional services that replace the complex process and save people some time, plastic recycling is much more likely to succeed. The government should also issue policies to simplify the labeling of plastic products, so that it is easier for people to collect them and save the time of classification. What they are required to do is simply to drop the plastic products to be recycled at the designated locations. The simplified recycling procedure conforms to the guidance factor of nudge theory. If people are very willing to recycle and preserve the environment, the government is responsible for developing a convenient channel for them, as this will lead to more satisfying results.

In reality, people often fall into collectivism and conservatism. Collectivism refers to the tendency of people to adhere to the common understanding that has been formed, even in the face of new situations or new requirements. Therefore, the government can use this psychological effect to achieve its policy goals. For example, in order to encourage people to recycle instead of throwing away plastic products into the garbage, the government should not invest too much on advertising. Instead, public recycling activities should be organized in the community, school, and corporate levels. The influence of the surround crowd can be more effective than any advertisement. Establishing recycling as a social norm and ethical value is an important part of the collectivism nudge. The government can use pollution data and facts to guide people's behavior to develop in a good direction. Influential public figures, celebrity, and the crowd participation will effectively motivate the public to recycle more, and form the habit of plastic recycling eventually.

Thaler believes that nudge is like putting GPS on people. People can input the desired destination in GPS, but it doesn't have to follow its planned route. Indeed, nudge helps people make more rational decisions without hindering people's freedom of choice. It is believed that in the near future, nudge theory will help the government to solve many social problems, and it will also have immeasurable application potential in areas such as public policy. For a long time, one of the main principles in the formulation of public policies has been material incentives, including positive (reward) incentives and negative (penalty) incentives. However, such public policies often have serious drawbacks. The implementation cost of the system is huge, both the cost incurred by the implementation and the resulting social costs. It is also easy to cause conflicts between different interest groups. In addition, when the incentive measures have disappeared or been withdrawn, the social groups automatically return to their original state.

The main reason for this is that the formulation of public policies does not consider the individual's freedom of choices. The policy is based on designers rather than participants. Nudges enable policy makers to design a strategy that satisfies the incentive compatibility of participating individuals. When the thrust of the policy disappears, people can maintain the inertia of the policy and continue the behavior in the direction that the policy wants. The default, simplification, and collectivism strategies require less social resources compared to mandatory and money-rewarding programs. More importantly, they present people with the convenience and guidance to do good, without hurting their freedom of choice. These characteristics of the nudges will effective contribute to the plastic recycling rate in the future.

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