Data and code info for: Reducing single-use cutlery with green nudges: Evidence from China’s food delivery industry

The rising consumer demand for online food delivery has significantly increased the consumption of disposable cutlery, leading to much greater plastic pollution worldwide. This study investigates the impact of green nudges on single-use cutlery consumption in China. Collaborating with Alibaba’s food delivery platform Eleme (similar to Uber Eats and DoorDash), we analyzed detailed customer-level data and found that the green nudges — changing the default to “No Cutlery” and rewarding consumers with “green points” — increased the share of “No Cutlery” orders by 648%. The aggregate environmental benefits are significant: if the green nudges were applied to all of China, more than 21.75 billion sets of single-use cutlery could be saved every year, equivalent to a 20.4% of plastic waste reduction in the food delivery industry or a 6.12% reduction in China’s total municipal plastic waste., The custom-by-year-month level data used for this research are obtained from Eleme, Alibaba’s food ordering and delivery platform which is similar to DoorDash and Uber Eats.
The data included 197,062 randomly selected users’ monthly food ordering history, their green points history, their tree planting records, and their personal characteristics from 1st Jan 2019 to 31st Dec 2021 in ten major Chinese cities. All of the consumers in the sample placed at least one food delivery order during the research period. Among the ten cities, there were three “treated” cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Seven cities were the “control” cities, including Qingdao, Xi’an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Chengdu. According to China’s provincial statistical yearbook, these cities had a total population of 157.36 million as of 2020.
Eleme provided monthly data on each customer’s food ordering history, including the number of orders, number of “No Cutlery” orders, and total expendi..., Access to the Raw Data:
The custom-by-year-month level data used for this research is stored on a publicly accessible server managed by Eleme. To access the server, please follow the following two steps:
(1) Write an email to the server manager at [e-mail], briefly stating your data request and proposing one or more time slots for server access. You do not have to fill any form in the application process.
(2) At the scheduled time, log in to the server via a temporary account provided by the server manager using this link: https://mozi-login.alibaba-inc.com/ssoLogin.htm?preLoginKey=dTwDQeXDFZ1685985098356GiqpKqStOX.