Incentivizing Sustainable Solid Waste Management

Open waste burning emits large quantities of black carbon and co-pollutants, contributing to climate change and impacting human health. Reliable and high-quality waste management services are sparse in many developing countries. Waste management services (WMS) in Liberia are mostly absent, provided by volunteers in some places. Our partner, Welthungerhilfe (a German NGO), is planning to provide WMS in Zwedru (33,000 habitants) and Fishtown (8,000 habitants). The project will provide these services to about 20,000 households and firms in total over the next three years. We plan to embed a randomized evaluation to understand households' willingness to pay (WTP) for WMS, and how this WTP varies with information about the benefits from proper WMS. In addition, since there are externalities from other households paying for WMS, we intend to study how WTP varies with the share of other households that are paying for the service.