Does higher education affect pro-environmental behavior? Evidence from household waste recycling in Greece
File(s)Kountouris_2023_Environ._Res._Lett._18_084017.pdf (12.69 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Kountouris, Y
Remoundou, K
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We examine the effect of higher education attainment on pro-environmental behavior focusing on household waste recycling. To address the endogeneity of higher education attainment, we exploit a set of reforms that increased opportunities for university studies in Greece, affecting cohorts graduating from highschool in year 2000. We leverage the exogenous variation introduced by the school enrollment age cutoff and estimate the local average treatment effect of higher education employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, comparing educational attainment, and recycling behavior between households that were just, and just not exposed to the reforms. We find little evidence that higher education increases the probability of recycling, and no evidence that the share of household waste recycled responds to higher educational attainment. Our results suggest that human capital accumulation alone may not deliver green behavior returns.
Date Issued
2023-07-28
Date Acceptance
2023-06-26
ISSN
1748-9326
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Start Page
1
End Page
21
Journal / Book Title
Environmental Research Letters
Volume
18
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original Content from
this work may be used
under the terms of the
Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 licence.
Any further distribution
of this work must
maintain attribution to
the author(s) and the title
of the work, journal
citation and DOI.
this work may be used
under the terms of the
Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 licence.
Any further distribution
of this work must
maintain attribution to
the author(s) and the title
of the work, journal
citation and DOI.
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace19a
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-07-28