Can green nudges in online food deliveries lead to lesser pollution? A study conducted in China thinks so

Subject: Environment

Section: Protected Areas

Why in the news?

A study conducted in collaboration with an online food delivery platform (Eleme) in China found that making “no disposable cutlery” the default choice for orders and rewarding customers with “green points” led to a 648% increase in the share of no-cutlery orders. This step could have significant benefits for the environment.

What are green nudges?

In behavioral economics, nudges are interventions that influence people’s choices to make certain decisions without restricting the choices available to them.
Green nudges are gentle persuasions to influence environment-friendly behaviour in people.
Nudges have been criticized in the past for being manipulative: they are not always transparent and can sometimes bank on ignorance or lack of awareness in people to work.
But researchers working on the study have said that the green nudges that they implemented are easy to understand and transparent to users.

About the study:

The study was conducted by Alibaba using a difference-in-differences model.
Historically, nudges focus on short-term impacts, but the Alibaba study showed its persisting effect through individuals’ ordering behaviour.
Method used:
- The Alibaba platform provides “Green points” for choosing “No single use cutlery (SUCs)”, and also allows its users to collect green points through other activities like walking more, taking more public transportation, selling used items, etc.
Findings of the study:
- Under the study, the share of no-cutlery orders increased in the cities where it was conducted, but remained relatively unchanged throughout the study period in the control cities.
- The Green Nudgedid not negatively impact Alibaba’s business.
- Women placed more ‘no cutlery’ orders than that of men.
- Middle-aged and elderly placed more orders with “no cutlery’ than that of youth and adults aged 18-24 years.
- Over 18 months in Shanghai, eight months in Beijing, and one month in Tianjin, the number of SUCs was reduced by more than 225.33 million sets.

The purpose of Green Nudge:

The green nudges were a result of Chinese regulations that prohibited online food delivery platforms from including SUCs in orders unless explicitly requested.
In early 2020, China announced ambitious plans to phase out single-use plastics from the country, beginning with a country-wide ban on single-use straws by the end of the year.

Do green nudge work in India:

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of SUCs.
Zomato, an online food delivery platform in India that occupies over 50% of market share in the space, also has similar nudges on its app.
While the company says that the option to skip cutlery was always available on its platform, it changed the default selection to “no-cutlery” in August 2021.
Zomato’s no-cutlery initiative was designed to reduce not just plastic but overall material waste.
The data suggests that three out of every five orders choose to opt out of receiving cutlery, which has resulted in an estimated 1,000 metric tonne reduction in cutlery waste till now.