European Regional Development Fund and pro-environmental behaviour. The case of Italian separate waste collection

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) regulations over two programming periods (2000–2006 and 2007–2013) in terms of separate waste collection rates of Italian regions. We analyse longitudinal data for 20 NUTS-2 Italian regions over two EU policy cycles (2000–2006 and 2007–2013), by means of a Difference-in-differences estimation method. The estimates suggest that ERDF regulations in both programming periods had no relevant impact on the achievement of cohesion policy goals for separate collection at the regional level. Subsequently, we analyse data for 103 NUTS-3 Italian provinces over 2000–2013 by means of two statistical tools: The Theil index (TI), and the Moran index (MI), and find that proximity effects at provincial scale cause positive social contagion of pro-environmental attitudes toward separate collection. Our results make a case for the relevance of ‘cultural’ policy measures fostering environmentally responsible attitudes as a possible pre-condition for effective implementation of ERDF-funded separate collection projects in low-performing regions.