Much of the responsibility for advancing the circular economy has been directed towards firms, yet many reuse opportunities can only be achieved through environmentally compliant, household-level recycling behaviors. In response, policymakers and recycling organizations are using a range of feedback mechanisms to promote household recycling that meets local quality standards. However, the effectiveness of these tactics remains unclear, and stakeholders are divided on the appropriateness of their use. In this research, we examine the role of two popular feedback mechanisms—information-only and information-plus-penalty—in correcting households’ curbside recycling behaviors. With information-only feedback, households are provided with best practices for recycling and are not penalized for their errors. With information-plus-penalty feedback, households also receive information, but temporarily forfeit their recycling services. While previous studies have explored the use of information and penalties as feedback mechanisms to guide behavioral changes, there is mixed evidence of their effectiveness, particularly in the recycling context. We address this research gap by analyzing unique data collected from a 2019 curbside auditing effort that occurred in a large, Mid-Western city. Our analysis leverages econometric methods, and recycling feedback and performance data from 25,359 audits across 11,899 households and 15 recycling routes. We find that information-only feedback mechanisms, while preferred by some stakeholders, are not associated with improvements in recycling quality (measured using household contamination rates). By contrast, our results indicate that punitive mechanisms (i.e., information-plus-penalty) involving cart refusals are associated with significant reductions in contamination rates: that is, households that receive punitive feedback reduce their contamination rate severity by 59%, and are 75% less likely to commit a violation in the future. More importantly, we do not find evidence that punitive feedback mechanisms generally discourage households’ participation in recycling programs (measured using future set out rates). Our study informs sustainable operations management literature by investigating how curbside feedback mechanisms, with differing levels of severity, influence critical dimensions of households’ recycling performance (i.e., recycling quality and participation). We also inform policymakers on how curbside feedback mechanisms can be more effectively leveraged to enhance opportunities for material reuse.

Problem definition: Fashion retailers are increasingly implementing take-back programs to reduce textile waste and prevent used clothing from being landfilled. To increase participation, retailers must decide how much and what type of information to provide to consumers, how to collect the used clothing, and how much of a financial reward to offer. However, the effectiveness of different types of information, convenience, and reward levels on consumer participation is not well understood, and participation rates in take-back programs remain low. Methodology/results: We examine the effect of different information levels (i.e., none, generic, and different types of specific information) and convenience levels on the reward required by consumers to return their used clothing through four experiments involving over 5,200 subjects. Across all experiments, we find that providing generic information that collected items will be diverted from the landfill significantly decreases the reward required by consumers to return their used clothing. However, we find that providing information about a specific circular economy strategy does not necessarily help. When the collected clothing will be recycled (either as open-loop or as closed-loop), consumers’ required reward is not significantly different from when the clothing will just be diverted from the landfill. Moreover, we find that when collected clothing will be resold, consumers’ required reward is significantly higher. We show that the negative response to resale is due to the consumers’ aversion to the retailer explicitly profiting from the returned clothing. We also find that making the return process more convenient lowers the reward required by consumers. Managerial implications: Our results offer several managerial insights. We find that information can be an effective lever to increase consumers’ participation in take-back programs, but only if used judiciously. If a retailer intends to resell collected clothing, it may consider offering a higher reward or making the return process more convenient. Even though a more convenient return process may be more costly for the retailer, those additional costs may be offset by the lower reward required by the consumers. Funding: A. Sáez de Tejada Cuenca’s research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [ref. SFJC1900I042215XV0]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.0561 .