Will one size fit all? Incentives designed to nurture prosocial behaviour

•This paper highlights the role of environmental morale on recycling activities.•A ‘nudge’ versus a ‘shove’ policy is evaluated using questionnaire data.•Both policies are in general effective in increasing recycling activities.•A policy choice conditioned upon environmental morale is superior.•A nudge is more effective at high levels of environmental morale.

Gneezy et al. (2011) review a literature that assesses the relevance of the form (monetary or non-monetary) of incentives employed to nurture prosocial behaviour. Here the objective is to assess the relevance of characteristics employed to describe individuals when comparing the efficacy of incentives designed to nurture prosocial behaviour. The impact of different incentives depends on the form they take and on the way they are received. This paper compares the impact of different incentives designed to increase pro-environmental behaviour (by increasing individuals’ willingness to recycle household waste). Some individuals are more responsive to a nudge (that increases individuals’ perceptions of the intrinsic value of action) than to a threat (that they will be punished if they refuse to comply). The relative efficacy of these incentives depends on the extent to which individuals are motivated by ‘environmental morale’. When designing policy to increase prosocial behaviour, ‘one size will not fit all’.