Newswise — New York City shoppers will soon have to pay 5 cents for disposable bags, as city council members have approved a measure to require some retailers to collect a fee on paper or plastic bags.
Tatiana Homonoff, a behavioral economist and assistant professor at Cornell University’s Department of Policy Analysis and Management, conducted a study demonstrating the impact of a similar 5-cent tax in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Her research found that the tax caused a significant decrease in the use of disposable bags just months after it was implemented.
Bio: http://www.human.cornell.edu/bio.cfm?netid=tah96
Homonoff says:
“Policies that charge customers for disposable shopping bags have been incredibly effective at reducing the use of plastic bags, even when the fee is quite small.
“Prior to the 5-cent tax in the Washington Metropolitan Area, eight out of 10 customers used a plastic bag to carry their groceries. This number decreased by 50 percent just two months after the tax was implemented.”
“In contrast to the overwhelming impact of the tax, policies that offered customers a 5-cent bonus for reusable bag use had no effect on plastic bag use. From a financial perspective, this is quite surprising since both policies – the bonus and the tax – offer customers a 5-cent incentive to use a reusable bag instead of a disposable bag.”
“However, research from behavioral economics suggests that individuals are ‘loss averse,’ meaning that they experience losses more strongly than gains of the same amount. This suggests that a 5-cent fee on plastic bags may be more effective at changing behavior than a 5-cent bonus for reusable bag use.”
RSS