Greenhouse gas emission is a major contributor to climate change and global warming. Many sustainability efforts are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These include recycling and the use of renewable energy. In the case of recycling, the general population is typically required to at least temporarily store, and possibly haul, the materials rather than simply throwing them away. This effort from the general population is a key aspect of recycling, and in order for it to work, some investment of time and effort is required by the public. In the case of corrugated cardboard boxes, it has been observed that there is less motivation for the general population to recycle them. This paper explores different means of motivating people to reuse, and not just recycle, with different types of incentives. The paper addresses the use of persuasion techniques and operant conditioning techniques together to incent the general population to adopt sustainable efforts. The paper makes an attempt to segment the general population based on persuasion preference, operant condition preference, and personality type to use different forms of incentives and motivational work unlike any approaches found in the literature review. Four types of persuasion techniques and four types of operant conditioning are combined to give 16 different types of incentives. Two online surveys are conducted, and their data are analyzed (using entropy, Hamming distance, chi-square, and ANOVA). The results indicate that “positive reinforcement ethos” is a cost-effective way to incent the general population. The results of this study can be applied to a wide range of applications such as incentives for solar panels, incentives for vaccination, and other areas wherein sustainability-centric behavior is encouraged.
Manufacturing of a product such as a corrugated cardboard box (CCB) includes the extraction of a variety of raw materials in addition to supply chain efforts to get the raw materials to the industry. Conducting a LifeCycle Assessment (LCA) gives the carbon emission of each phase of the product and a quantitative estimate of the overall product carbon footprint and its effect on the environment. This gives impetus to recommendations for improving the phases of the lifecycle to minimize carbon emissions. The proposed waste management method in this paper is the “reuse” method instead of recycling or landfilling the CCB and, in so doing, focusing only on reducing carbon emissions in the manufacturing phase. The paper examines if the incremental cost of reusing the CCBs is less than the environmental and economic cost of reducing the extraction and supply chain of raw materials. This paper uses LCA to evaluate the carbon emission in each phase of the lifecycle of a typical 1 kg corrugated cardboard box in the United States. Carbon emission for the proposed “reuse” phase is also calculated, and the results are compared. This paper also explores the economic feasibility of the proposed “reuse” method that incentivizes the general population to reuse the CCBs instead of recycling or landfilling them. Economic tools such as willingness-to-pay vs. marginal cost curves and benefit-cost analyses are used to evaluate economic feasibility. The results indicate that the “reuse” method for CCBs is economically and environmentally feasible. It also supports the approach of using analytics, economics, and LCA to create a model that can be used for other products and processes as an evaluative process to determine if businesses can benefit from the reduction (or removal) of material extraction costs from the supply chain.
Climate change is heavily impacted by greenhouse gases. Many sustainability efforts directly or indirectly affect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the environment. In order to address climate change, sustainability efforts are promoted all around the world. The need to motivate the general population was identified by authors in their previous research. This paper proposes to use a positive reinforcement ethos as a psychological incentive to motivate the general population. This paper further examines the findings of the previous paper to better construct the structure of motivating the general population with the use of this positive reinforcement ethos. This paper attempts to segment the general population based on demographic information including age, gender, awareness of climate change, and current recycling efforts to examine its relevance with persuasion and operant conditions. Further, this paper also tests the hypothesis of using entropy as a tool to identify confusing/leading questions on the survey. Two different sustainability effort options are explored: returning and reusing Corrugated Cardboard Boxes (CCBs). An online survey is conducted, and its data are analyzed to test these hypotheses. The results indicate that reusing CCBs is statistically significantly preferred over returning them. Also, ethos and aesthetics are statistically significantly preferred over logos and pathos. Segmenting the general population based on demographic does not yield any significant effect on motivating the general population. The results of this study can be applied to motivate the general population for different sustainability efforts such as promoting green energy, waste management, and other initiatives.
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