Study: With Reusable Cup Schemes, Gambling Trumps Morality

A plastic cup with some diluted coffee liquid enjoying its final moments in the sunlight before its inevitable march toward the landfill.

Believe it or not, humans may not be drawn to reusable cup schemes due to a sense of moral duty or good old-fashioned guilt. What’s really going to draw them in, according to a new study, is gambling.

Led by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, the study suggests that probabilistic rewards — i.e. small chances to win something exciting — are more effective than offering automatic discounts for reusable cups.

Published in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling and led by Simon Sheppard and colleagues at UBC, the study unfolded in two phases at multiple campus cafes.

First, in a pilot at a UBC café, customers who used reusable cups were given a 5% chance to win a $5 gift card. Posters and social media announcements highlighted the opportunity, and a virtual spinning wheel added an interactive element. During the promotion, reusable cup usage tripled compared to baseline levels.

In a larger field experiment, researchers upped the ante. At one campus coffee shop, customers using reusable cups had a 10% chance of winning a free coffee, valued at $3.40. A neighboring shop acted as a control, offering a 25 cent discount for reusable cups.

Over several months, the shop with the reward system saw a sustained increase in reusable cup usage, while the control shops actually saw decreased overall usage — a result attributed to the economic climate in B.C. at the time of the study.

“The study provides first evidence that probabilistic rewards can increase the use of reusable cups at coffee shops, even at a time when the frequency of reusable cups is in decline,” the authors wrote. “This builds on past studies to show that probabilistic rewards can encourage pro-environmental behaviors beyond recycling, demonstrating theoretical generalizability of the efficacy of probabilistic rewards in advancing sustainability.”

The study’s findings hinge on the well-established psychological principle known as prospect theory, developed by behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The prospect of winning — as opposed to receiving a discount just like every other customer — taps into a concept called “anticipatory happiness.”

It’s not surprising that “gamifying” cup use in coffee shops has proven effective. Many of coffee’s largest purveyors have been playing games with consumers’ heads for decades, happily supplying veritable mountains of single-use waste while also cosplaying as sustainability heroes.

The cynical bet may still be on convenience for the masses as opposed to anticipatory happiness for the few.

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