Plastic waste has doubled in the past two decades, and less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled. “Bottle bills” are legislation to combat plastic waste by increasing recycling rates, by adding a per-bottle deposit that gets refunded to consumers who return empty containers. Industry experts are divided over the retail sales and price implications of such measures. To clarify the implications of such legislation, the current study uses a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to investigate how New York’s 2009 law, targeting pure bottled water in containers < 128 fl. oz., affected consumers and retailers in terms of whether prices of bottled beverages changed and whether the bottle bill affected sales of bottled beverages. The study also identifies three mechanisms that can drive such effects. The results reveal that retailers increased prices of items covered by the bottle bill by 4% while keeping prices of other items, outside the bottle bill’s scope, constant. Volume sales in the water category decreased by 6%. This study finds substantial differences in these effects across package sizes and provides suggestive evidence that consumers’ ideological aversion and retailers’ additional operational effort and holding costs are related to these sales and price changes.

中文翻译：

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快报：瓶子账单的后果：瓶子押金返还计划如何影响零售价格并导致消费者购买更大的包装尺寸

塑料垃圾在过去二十年中翻了一番，只有不到 10% 的塑料垃圾被回收利用。“瓶子法案”是通过提高回收率来打击塑料垃圾的立法，通过增加每瓶押金来退还归还空容器的消费者。行业专家对此类措施的零售额和价格影响存在分歧。为了阐明此类立法的影响，本研究使用合成的双重差分方法来调查纽约州 2009 年的法律，针对 128 液量盎司<容器中的纯瓶装水，如何影响消费者和零售商，包括瓶装饮料的价格是否发生变化以及瓶装饮料是否影响瓶装饮料的销售。该研究还确定了可以驱动这种效果的三种机制。结果显示，零售商将瓶子法案涵盖的商品价格提高了 4%，同时保持瓶子法案范围之外的其他商品的价格不变。水品类的销量下降了 6%。这项研究发现，不同包装尺寸的这些影响存在很大差异，并提供了暗示性证据，表明消费者的意识形态厌恶和零售商的额外运营努力和持有成本与这些销售和价格变化有关。