Designing effective policy interventions to motivate mitigation actions requires more realistic assumptions about human decision-making based on empirical evidence from the behavioural sciences. We therefore need to consider behavioural rather than only economic costs and benefits in policy intervention designs

Evans, Steve

Jia, Lili

Linden, Sander van der

English

Designing effective policy interventions to motivate mitigation actions requires more realistic assumptions about human decision-making based on empirical evidence from the behavioural sciences. We therefore need to consider behavioural rather than only economic costs and benefits in policy intervention designs

Apollo (Cambridge)

COMMENTMotivating actions to mitigateplastic pollutionLili Jia1, Steve Evans 1* & Sander van der Linden 2Designing effective policy interventions to motivate mitigation actions requiresmore realistic assumptions about human decision-making based on empiricalevidence from the behavioural sciences. We therefore need to consider beha-vioural rather than only economic costs and beneﬁts in policy interventiondesigns.Reducing plastic pollution has been pushed to the top of the global policy agenda. As of 2015,6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste has been generated, 79% of which has ended up in landﬁlls orthe natural environment1. This huge amount of plastic pollution is threatening our marine,freshwater, and soil environment and potentially the safety of our entire food system1.Accordingly, a number of governments have taken initiatives against plastic pollution: Canadaaims to ban single-use plastics by 20212; Peru banned single-use plastics in 76 natural andcultural protected areas2; and 170 United Nations Member States pledged to reduce the use ofplastics “signiﬁcantly” by 20303.While plastics are ubiquitous in daily life, reducing plastic pollution requires actions from allstakeholders to encourage a more sustainable use of plastics. For example, individuals need toreduce consumption and minimise their plastic waste4,5. Industries need to take on producerresponsibility4,5 and design plastic products that minimise negative environmental impactsthroughout their lifecycles4–6. Governments need to raise public awareness about plastic waste,restrict toxic6 and avoidable plastic usages6 and improve plastic waste management for recyclingand remanufacturing4–6. Many of these actions, however, are currently lacking. From 2009 to2017, global demand for plastics increased at 4% annually and plastic waste has continued togrow7. Industries rarely explore the potential of eco-design to reduce, reuse and recycle plasticwaste4—most of which has gone to incineration or landﬁlls leading to a huge loss in naturalresource value8.Beyond Homo EconomicusDesigning policy to motivate mitigation actions requires a better understanding of behaviouraltheory. Policy-makers often rely on an outdated mental model of human behaviour9 where it isassumed that price policy alone can successfully motivate mitigation actions. For example, taxingplastic products is supposed to increase its price and accordingly, decrease its consumption9. It isderived from neoclassical economic theory: where demand for the quantity of a normal good(any good for which demand increases with increased income) has a negative relationship withits price (Fig. 1a)9. Because the economic costs of many plastic products are often small, theimpact of a change in price on plastic demand reduction is likely to be too modest to achieve asigniﬁcant societal reduction in plastic pollution. Thus neoclassical economic theoryhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 OPEN1 Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK. 2 Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB,UK. *email: se321@cam.ac.ukNATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 |www.nature.com/naturecommunications 11234567890():,;oversimpliﬁes human behaviour by solely relying on economicincentives10 and loses its predictive power when more beha-vioural incentives are involved, e.g., time, effort, and convenience.To design more effective policy interventions, it is thereforecritical to improve our theoretical understanding of behaviouralincentives which go above and beyond mere economic incen-tives11–13.We suggest that behavioural theory is a more promising candi-date for helping policy makers motivate plastic mitigation actions.Behavioural theory tells us that an individual makes a demanddecision by weighing behavioural costs and beneﬁts derived fromvalues in consumption activities11–13. Behavioural costs include butare not limited to money, availability, time, effort and distance11–13.An individual’s mitigation actions can be motivated throughincreasing behavioural costs, such as bans and taxation. Forexample, estimates reveal that banning and taxing single-use plasticbags in European countries have motivated consumers to reducetheir plastic bag waste by 66–90%14. Accordingly, it is oftenbelieved that increasing behavioural costs is the most effective wayto motivate mitigation actions. Its application, however, is limitedto avoidable plastic wastes, such as straws2, and the approach facesdifﬁculty to help achieve a more general reduction of plastic con-sumption. For example, behavioural research on the single-usecarrier bag charge in Wales ﬁnds that although the policy increasedbag reuse, such “external” incentives do little to motivate widersustainable views and behaviours15. More effective policy inter-ventions are therefore needed to motivate consumers to curb theconsumption of plastics.Behavioural costs and beneﬁtsBehavioural beneﬁts provide an alternative pathway to motivat-ing mitigation actions (Fig. 1b). These beneﬁts can be psycho-logical in nature and extend far beyond mere economic value.Behavioural beneﬁts are broadly known to be closely associatedwith an individual’s personal goals which are categorised intothree groups:13 (1) hedonic goals (e.g., avoiding effort, gainingpleasure); (2) gain goals (e.g., money and social status); and (3)normative goals (doing what is right, normative, or appropriate).Mitigation actions are more likely to be motivated when theyconsistently deliver behavioural beneﬁts to multiple or all threegoals13. For example, recycling plastic waste can give rise tobehavioural beneﬁts by eliciting positive feelings—also known asenvironmental ‘warm-glow’—which can be leveraged to motivatebehavioural mitigation actions16.Gaining a better understanding of behavioural costs andbeneﬁts will lead to more effective policy-making to motivateplastic pollution mitigation. To illustrate, consider that whileconscious actions require more cognitive involvement (implyinghigher behavioural costs), subconscious or intuitive actionsrequire little to no cognitive effort and thus have lower associatedbehavioural costs13. A plastic pollution mitigation action is morelikely to be motivated if it requires less cognitive effort (a clearbehavioural beneﬁt). For example, in some European countries,container refund machines are placed at supermarkets to make iteasier for consumers to recycle their plastic bottles when they gogrocery shopping. This indicates that industries can help theircustomers reduce plastic pollution more easily when theyimprove their products and service designs5.It is often assumed that industries have little incentive to takeactions to reduce plastic pollution because of the fear that it mayreduce their proﬁts. Yet, consumers are often more concernedwith the functionality delivered by plastic products rather thanplastics themselves10. This means that industries can reduceplastic waste and production cost without sacriﬁcing the qualityof their services. For example, simply providing a reﬁllable optionfor personal and home-care products could help households saveabout 5% of plastic packaging materials5. To underline this point,it is estimated that 20% of plastic packing can be saved globallythrough reuse and the cost savings on those materials amount toabout $9 billion5.Thus, even though the use of plastics is sometimes unavoid-able, industries can mitigate plastic pollution through advancingthe design of their products5. Estimates indicate that 50% ofplastic packaging can be recycled through improving the designof packaging. For example, using PET to replace PVC, PS, andEPS plastics can remove the source of contamination in theXXAXBPA PB PABReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefitsfor scientistsReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefitsfor producersReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefits forgovernmentReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefits forconsumersThe boundary ofbehavioural costsConsumers’ behavioural benefitsScientists’ behavioural benefitsGovernment’s behavioural benefitsIndustries’ behavioural benefitsPricing modelBehavioural cost and benefit modela bFig. 1 The graph on the left a shows the pricing model in neoclassical economic theory where the quantity demanded of a normal good (X) has a negativerelationship with its price (P). If X’s price increases from PA to PB, the quantity demanded of X will decrease from XA to XB. The diagram on the right bshows how behavioural costs and beneﬁts may affect demand. The green area in the circle indicates the behavioural beneﬁts of reducing plastic pollutionfor consumers, government, industries, and scientists, respectively. The square represents the constraints of behavioural costs. The arrows outside of thesquare indicate that actions (to mitigate plastic pollution) can be motivated either by increasing behavioural beneﬁts or by decreasing the behavioural costsof the stakeholdersCOMMENT NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-92 NATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 | www.nature.com/naturecommunicationsrecycling process6. If industries choose clear or light-colouredrather than coloured or opaque materials in product design, itwill increase the quality of recycled plastics6. Despite thesemitigation potentials in product design, industries often lackincentives to explore it5,6.Designing better policies: towards a common goalEffective policies should therefore motivate industries and indivi-duals to reduce plastic pollution collaboratively. The ExtendedProducer Responsibility (ERS) scheme in the EU has increased therecycling rate of plastic packaging5, however, it fails to encourageindustries to explore the full mitigation potential of plastic pollutionreduction6. On one hand, the low compliance fees for plasticproducers do not provide sufﬁcient incentive for producers toadopt an eco-design. On the other hand, the fragmentation ofcollection and sorting systems6 and the incoherent regulationof ERS among different EU member states create barriers forproducers to take more responsible actions to reduce plastic pol-lution5. These behavioural barriers need to be considered in plasticreduction policy design, for example, extending ERS to more plasticproducts, increasing the ERS compliance fee for producers5, har-monising ERS regulation5,6 and integrating higher environmentalstandards into the standards of plastic products6.The actions of individuals, industries and policy makers arenot independent from one another. For example, when govern-ment policy raises awareness of reducing plastic waste in daily lifeand industries provide convenient options for consumers to reﬁllpersonal and home-care products6, it will motivate more con-sumers to reduce their plastic consumption. These coordinatedactions, however, are rarely considered in the design of inter-ventions. How to effectively integrate the knowledge of thebehavioural sciences into the design of mitigation action inter-ventions and motivate collaborative efforts across stakeholdersremains a major policy challenge. Both basic and applied researchis urgently needed to help design more effective interventions andmotivate mitigation actions at population level.Mitigating plastic pollution is a global challenge. Althoughscientists, policy makers, industries and consumers have started torespond to this challenge, their actions are often motivated solelyby considering behavioural costs. Banning single-use plastics maynot always provide an effective solution for all types of plastic usein daily life. Increasing behavioural beneﬁts and lowering thebehavioural costs of reducing plastic pollution for decision-makers offers a more promising pathway to large-scale societalmitigation actions. This requires deepening our theoretical andempirical understanding of behavioural incentives and makingmore behaviourally realistic assumptions in designing policyinterventions. It cannot be achieved by behavioural scientistsalone, however, and will require a collaborative effort from allstakeholders, including behavioural scientists, engineers, chemists,ecologists, policy makers, industries, and consumers. Together wecan unlock the behavioural beneﬁts of mitigating plastic reductionand move toward a society free from plastic pollution.Received: 16 July 2019; Accepted: 23 September 2019;References1. Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R. & Law, K. L. Production, use, and fate of all plasticsever made. Sci. Adv. 3, e1700782 (2017).2. A running list of action on plastic pollution. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/07/ocean-plastic-pollution-solutions/ Accessed 13thAugust 2019.3. UN resolution pledges to plastic reduction by 2030 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47592111 Accessed 21st August 2019.4. European Commission. Proposal for a directive of the European Parliamentand of the council on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic productson the environment. 2018/0172(COD).5. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The new plastics economy catalysing action(2017).6. Filho, W. L. et al. An overview of the problems posed by plastic products andthe role of extended producer responsibility in Europe. J. Clean. Prod. 214,550–558 (2019).7. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/ Accessed 21st August 2019.8. PlasticsEurope. Plastics – the Facts 2018: an analysis of European plasticsproduction, demand and waste data (2018).9. Shaﬁr, E. The behavioral foundations of public policy. Princeton UniversityPress (2013).10. Aidt, T., Jia, L. & Low, H. Are prices enough? The economics of materialdemand reduction. Philos. Trans. A 375, 20160370 (2017).11. Lancaster, K. A new approach to consumer theory. J. Political Econ. 74,132–157 (1966).12. Simone, H. Models of man: social and rational; mathematical essays onrational human behaviour in society setting. (Wiley, New York, 1957).13. Steg, L., Bolderdijk, J. W., Keizer, K. & Perlaviciute, G. An integratedframework for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: the role of values,situational factors and goals. J. Environ. Psychol. 38, 104–115 (2014).14. Nielsen, T. D., Holmberg, K. & Stripple, J. Need a bag? A review of publicpolicies on plastic carrier bags – Where, how and to what effect? WasteManag. 87, 428–440 (2019).15. Thomas, G. O., Poortinga, W. & Sautkina, E. The Welsh single-use carrier bagcharge and behavioural spillover. J. Environ. Psychol. 47, 126–135 (2016).16. Van der Linden, S. Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-costsustainable behaviour. Nat. Sustainability 1, 28–30 (2018).AcknowledgementsL.J. is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (NMZM/386).Author contributionsL.J. conceived of and drafted the paper. S.E. and S.V.D. contributed formative ideas,recommendations, and assisted with editing the paper.Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.Additional informationCorrespondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.E.Peer review information Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewer(s)for their contribution to the peer review of this work.Reprints and permission information is available at http://www.nature.com/reprintsPublisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional afﬁliations.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the CreativeCommons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third partymaterial in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unlessindicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in thearticle’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutoryregulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly fromthe copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.© The Author(s) 2019NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 COMMENTNATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 |www.nature.com/naturecommunications 3

Motivating actions to mitigate plastic pollution.

COMMENTMotivating actions to mitigateplastic pollutionLili Jia1, Steve Evans 1* & Sander van der Linden 2Designing effective policy interventions to motivate mitigation actions requiresmore realistic assumptions about human decision-making based on empiricalevidence from the behavioural sciences. We therefore need to consider beha-vioural rather than only economic costs and benefits in policy interventiondesigns.Reducing plastic pollution has been pushed to the top of the global policy agenda. As of 2015,6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste has been generated, 79% of which has ended up in landfills orthe natural environment1. This huge amount of plastic pollution is threatening our marine,freshwater, and soil environment and potentially the safety of our entire food system1.Accordingly, a number of governments have taken initiatives against plastic pollution: Canadaaims to ban single-use plastics by 20212; Peru banned single-use plastics in 76 natural andcultural protected areas2; and 170 United Nations Member States pledged to reduce the use ofplastics “significantly” by 20303.While plastics are ubiquitous in daily life, reducing plastic pollution requires actions from allstakeholders to encourage a more sustainable use of plastics. For example, individuals need toreduce consumption and minimise their plastic waste4,5. Industries need to take on producerresponsibility4,5 and design plastic products that minimise negative environmental impactsthroughout their lifecycles4–6. Governments need to raise public awareness about plastic waste,restrict toxic6 and avoidable plastic usages6 and improve plastic waste management for recyclingand remanufacturing4–6. Many of these actions, however, are currently lacking. From 2009 to2017, global demand for plastics increased at 4% annually and plastic waste has continued togrow7. Industries rarely explore the potential of eco-design to reduce, reuse and recycle plasticwaste4—most of which has gone to incineration or landfills leading to a huge loss in naturalresource value8.Beyond Homo EconomicusDesigning policy to motivate mitigation actions requires a better understanding of behaviouraltheory. Policy-makers often rely on an outdated mental model of human behaviour9 where it isassumed that price policy alone can successfully motivate mitigation actions. For example, taxingplastic products is supposed to increase its price and accordingly, decrease its consumption9. It isderived from neoclassical economic theory: where demand for the quantity of a normal good(any good for which demand increases with increased income) has a negative relationship withits price (Fig. 1a)9. Because the economic costs of many plastic products are often small, theimpact of a change in price on plastic demand reduction is likely to be too modest to achieve asignificant societal reduction in plastic pollution. Thus neoclassical economic theoryhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 OPEN1 Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK. 2 Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB,UK. *email: se321@cam.ac.ukNATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 |www.nature.com/naturecommunications 11234567890():,;oversimplifies human behaviour by solely relying on economicincentives10 and loses its predictive power when more beha-vioural incentives are involved, e.g., time, effort, and convenience.To design more effective policy interventions, it is thereforecritical to improve our theoretical understanding of behaviouralincentives which go above and beyond mere economic incen-tives11–13.We suggest that behavioural theory is a more promising candi-date for helping policy makers motivate plastic mitigation actions.Behavioural theory tells us that an individual makes a demanddecision by weighing behavioural costs and benefits derived fromvalues in consumption activities11–13. Behavioural costs include butare not limited to money, availability, time, effort and distance11–13.An individual’s mitigation actions can be motivated throughincreasing behavioural costs, such as bans and taxation. Forexample, estimates reveal that banning and taxing single-use plasticbags in European countries have motivated consumers to reducetheir plastic bag waste by 66–90%14. Accordingly, it is oftenbelieved that increasing behavioural costs is the most effective wayto motivate mitigation actions. Its application, however, is limitedto avoidable plastic wastes, such as straws2, and the approach facesdifficulty to help achieve a more general reduction of plastic con-sumption. For example, behavioural research on the single-usecarrier bag charge in Wales finds that although the policy increasedbag reuse, such “external” incentives do little to motivate widersustainable views and behaviours15. More effective policy inter-ventions are therefore needed to motivate consumers to curb theconsumption of plastics.Behavioural costs and benefitsBehavioural benefits provide an alternative pathway to motivat-ing mitigation actions (Fig. 1b). These benefits can be psycho-logical in nature and extend far beyond mere economic value.Behavioural benefits are broadly known to be closely associatedwith an individual’s personal goals which are categorised intothree groups:13 (1) hedonic goals (e.g., avoiding effort, gainingpleasure); (2) gain goals (e.g., money and social status); and (3)normative goals (doing what is right, normative, or appropriate).Mitigation actions are more likely to be motivated when theyconsistently deliver behavioural benefits to multiple or all threegoals13. For example, recycling plastic waste can give rise tobehavioural benefits by eliciting positive feelings—also known asenvironmental ‘warm-glow’—which can be leveraged to motivatebehavioural mitigation actions16.Gaining a better understanding of behavioural costs andbenefits will lead to more effective policy-making to motivateplastic pollution mitigation. To illustrate, consider that whileconscious actions require more cognitive involvement (implyinghigher behavioural costs), subconscious or intuitive actionsrequire little to no cognitive effort and thus have lower associatedbehavioural costs13. A plastic pollution mitigation action is morelikely to be motivated if it requires less cognitive effort (a clearbehavioural benefit). For example, in some European countries,container refund machines are placed at supermarkets to make iteasier for consumers to recycle their plastic bottles when they gogrocery shopping. This indicates that industries can help theircustomers reduce plastic pollution more easily when theyimprove their products and service designs5.It is often assumed that industries have little incentive to takeactions to reduce plastic pollution because of the fear that it mayreduce their profits. Yet, consumers are often more concernedwith the functionality delivered by plastic products rather thanplastics themselves10. This means that industries can reduceplastic waste and production cost without sacrificing the qualityof their services. For example, simply providing a refillable optionfor personal and home-care products could help households saveabout 5% of plastic packaging materials5. To underline this point,it is estimated that 20% of plastic packing can be saved globallythrough reuse and the cost savings on those materials amount toabout $9 billion5.Thus, even though the use of plastics is sometimes unavoid-able, industries can mitigate plastic pollution through advancingthe design of their products5. Estimates indicate that 50% ofplastic packaging can be recycled through improving the designof packaging. For example, using PET to replace PVC, PS, andEPS plastics can remove the source of contamination in theXXAXBPA PB PABReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefitsfor scientistsReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefitsfor producersReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefits forgovernmentReducing behaviouralcosts or increasingbehavioural benefits forconsumersThe boundary ofbehavioural costsConsumers’ behavioural benefitsScientists’ behavioural benefitsGovernment’s behavioural benefitsIndustries’ behavioural benefitsPricing modelBehavioural cost and benefit modela bFig. 1 The graph on the left a shows the pricing model in neoclassical economic theory where the quantity demanded of a normal good (X) has a negativerelationship with its price (P). If X’s price increases from PA to PB, the quantity demanded of X will decrease from XA to XB. The diagram on the right bshows how behavioural costs and benefits may affect demand. The green area in the circle indicates the behavioural benefits of reducing plastic pollutionfor consumers, government, industries, and scientists, respectively. The square represents the constraints of behavioural costs. The arrows outside of thesquare indicate that actions (to mitigate plastic pollution) can be motivated either by increasing behavioural benefits or by decreasing the behavioural costsof the stakeholdersCOMMENT NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-92 NATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 | www.nature.com/naturecommunicationsrecycling process6. If industries choose clear or light-colouredrather than coloured or opaque materials in product design, itwill increase the quality of recycled plastics6. Despite thesemitigation potentials in product design, industries often lackincentives to explore it5,6.Designing better policies: towards a common goalEffective policies should therefore motivate industries and indivi-duals to reduce plastic pollution collaboratively. The ExtendedProducer Responsibility (ERS) scheme in the EU has increased therecycling rate of plastic packaging5, however, it fails to encourageindustries to explore the full mitigation potential of plastic pollutionreduction6. On one hand, the low compliance fees for plasticproducers do not provide sufficient incentive for producers toadopt an eco-design. On the other hand, the fragmentation ofcollection and sorting systems6 and the incoherent regulationof ERS among different EU member states create barriers forproducers to take more responsible actions to reduce plastic pol-lution5. These behavioural barriers need to be considered in plasticreduction policy design, for example, extending ERS to more plasticproducts, increasing the ERS compliance fee for producers5, har-monising ERS regulation5,6 and integrating higher environmentalstandards into the standards of plastic products6.The actions of individuals, industries and policy makers arenot independent from one another. For example, when govern-ment policy raises awareness of reducing plastic waste in daily lifeand industries provide convenient options for consumers to refillpersonal and home-care products6, it will motivate more con-sumers to reduce their plastic consumption. These coordinatedactions, however, are rarely considered in the design of inter-ventions. How to effectively integrate the knowledge of thebehavioural sciences into the design of mitigation action inter-ventions and motivate collaborative efforts across stakeholdersremains a major policy challenge. Both basic and applied researchis urgently needed to help design more effective interventions andmotivate mitigation actions at population level.Mitigating plastic pollution is a global challenge. Althoughscientists, policy makers, industries and consumers have started torespond to this challenge, their actions are often motivated solelyby considering behavioural costs. Banning single-use plastics maynot always provide an effective solution for all types of plastic usein daily life. Increasing behavioural benefits and lowering thebehavioural costs of reducing plastic pollution for decision-makers offers a more promising pathway to large-scale societalmitigation actions. This requires deepening our theoretical andempirical understanding of behavioural incentives and makingmore behaviourally realistic assumptions in designing policyinterventions. It cannot be achieved by behavioural scientistsalone, however, and will require a collaborative effort from allstakeholders, including behavioural scientists, engineers, chemists,ecologists, policy makers, industries, and consumers. Together wecan unlock the behavioural benefits of mitigating plastic reductionand move toward a society free from plastic pollution.Received: 16 July 2019; Accepted: 23 September 2019;References1. Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R. & Law, K. L. Production, use, and fate of all plasticsever made. Sci. Adv. 3, e1700782 (2017).2. A running list of action on plastic pollution. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/07/ocean-plastic-pollution-solutions/ Accessed 13thAugust 2019.3. UN resolution pledges to plastic reduction by 2030 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47592111 Accessed 21st August 2019.4. European Commission. Proposal for a directive of the European Parliamentand of the council on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic productson the environment. 2018/0172(COD).5. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The new plastics economy catalysing action(2017).6. Filho, W. L. et al. An overview of the problems posed by plastic products andthe role of extended producer responsibility in Europe. J. Clean. Prod. 214,550–558 (2019).7. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/ Accessed 21st August 2019.8. PlasticsEurope. Plastics – the Facts 2018: an analysis of European plasticsproduction, demand and waste data (2018).9. Shafir, E. The behavioral foundations of public policy. Princeton UniversityPress (2013).10. Aidt, T., Jia, L. & Low, H. Are prices enough? The economics of materialdemand reduction. Philos. Trans. A 375, 20160370 (2017).11. Lancaster, K. A new approach to consumer theory. J. Political Econ. 74,132–157 (1966).12. Simone, H. Models of man: social and rational; mathematical essays onrational human behaviour in society setting. (Wiley, New York, 1957).13. Steg, L., Bolderdijk, J. W., Keizer, K. & Perlaviciute, G. An integratedframework for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: the role of values,situational factors and goals. J. Environ. Psychol. 38, 104–115 (2014).14. Nielsen, T. D., Holmberg, K. & Stripple, J. Need a bag? A review of publicpolicies on plastic carrier bags – Where, how and to what effect? WasteManag. 87, 428–440 (2019).15. Thomas, G. O., Poortinga, W. & Sautkina, E. The Welsh single-use carrier bagcharge and behavioural spillover. J. Environ. Psychol. 47, 126–135 (2016).16. Van der Linden, S. Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-costsustainable behaviour. Nat. Sustainability 1, 28–30 (2018).AcknowledgementsL.J. is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (NMZM/386).Author contributionsL.J. conceived of and drafted the paper. S.E. and S.V.D. contributed formative ideas,recommendations, and assisted with editing the paper.Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.Additional informationCorrespondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.E.Peer review information Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewer(s)for their contribution to the peer review of this work.Reprints and permission information is available at http://www.nature.com/reprintsPublisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional affiliations.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the CreativeCommons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third partymaterial in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unlessindicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in thearticle’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutoryregulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly fromthe copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.© The Author(s) 2019NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 COMMENTNATURE COMMUNICATIONS |         (2019) 10:4582 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12666-9 |www.nature.com/naturecommunications 3

Motivating actions to mitigate plastic pollution

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Motivating actions to mitigate plastic pollution

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