Conference Agenda

Many environmental policies rely on information campaigns to promote voluntary participation in socially desirable activities. This paper studies the effectiveness of such campaigns in the context of pharmaceutical waste recycling in France, where returning unused medicines is voluntary and managed through a delegated eco-organization. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which individuals decide whether to recycle by comparing an individual-specific valuation of recycling with a perceived cost that includes time, effort, and informational frictions. Using repeated cross-sectional survey data, we exploit a standardized informational script delivered during interviews to all respondents who report not recycling medicines and examine subsequent stated intentions to change behavior. We find that the informational message is associated with higher intended recycling only among individuals with high valuation of recycling, while individuals with low valuation remain largely unresponsive. These findings highlight intrinsic limits of information-based policy instruments and help explain why uniform campaigns implemented through delegated governance structures often generate modest aggregate effects, underscoring the role of behavioral heterogeneity in environmental policy design.