TY - JOUR
T1 - Does higher education affect pro-environmental behavior?
T2 - Evidence from household waste recycling in Greece
AU - Kountouris, Yiannis
AU - Remoundou, Kyriaki
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the National Statistical Office, Greece, that provided the underlying data making this research possible. We thank two anonymous Reviewers for useful comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are ours.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2023/8/1
Y1 - 2023/8/1
N2 - 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 high school 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.
AB - 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 high school 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.
KW - pro-environmental returns of education
KW - higher education
KW - sustainable consumption
KW - recycling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85166677767&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/ace19a
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/ace19a
M3 - Article
SN - 1748-9326
VL - 18
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 8
M1 - 084017
ER -
