It is a psychological strategy that all parents will be familiar with: instead of scolding an misbehaving child, focus instead in rewarding them for good behaviour.
Now the idea is well received outside the nursery, with implications for everything from recycling clothes to policing.
Consumers end up with piles of unwanted clothes. Every year in the UK, 300,000 tonnes ends up in landfill — 235 million individual items.
Now however, apps such as ReGain, Regive and Stuffstr are making it simpler — and more worthwhile — for people to return their unwanted clobber.
The ReGain app can be used to find one of 20,000 drop-off points. In return, the diligent consumer earns rewards such as discount coupons for high street retailers. Stuffstr works in partnership with John Lewis to help people get cash in return for unwanted items from the chain.
“Possibly the one prediction that we economists get right is that if you incentivise (激励) a behaviour, you will get more of it,” says Dr Matthew Levy, a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics.
He cites research, including his own, showing that financial incentives encouraging regular exercise, stopping smoking and losing weight effectively promote healthy behaviours and that there is no backlash when the incentives are removed.“If anything, the incentives can be used to jump-start a healthy habit that keeps going,”he says.
In the four months after its launch, the ReGain scheme received almost 17,000 parcels containing 47 tonnes of used clothes and shoes, of which 95% could potentially be reused, according to its founder Jack Ostrowski.
“We need to find a way to influence behaviour, and discount coupons help,” he says. The platform is also working with brands and retailers to find ways to divert used clothes from landfills and into the production of new clothes, he adds.
Other reward schemes have had success in encouraging behavioural change.
When police in Canada issued “positive tickets”— coupons for free food or movie tickets — to reward good behaviour among young people, they reported an almost 50% drop in youth-related service calls.
“My officers would say' In the old days we'd drive up in the police car and the kids would run away from us, now they run to us'.”
In a similar venture, Hull city council have announced plans to launch a digital reward token — the HullCoin — that can be earned by volunteering and spent at local retailers.
Elsewhere, a study on the recruitment of health workers in Zambia found that highlighting economic incentives during the recruitment process caused future employees to be more motivated and task-focused.
“Obviously different groups are motivated by different factors,” says Ostrowski. “For some, the feel good factor is enough, and for others, that reward stimulus is required.”
