Friday, December 9, 2011

Markets in Everything: Dog Poop Lottery

From The Inquisitr (ht: Mike W.):

"The Taiwanese city of New Taipei this week came up with a unique solution for cleaning their streets of dog feces, they launched a city wide lottery that everyone could participate in. City officials were able to collect 14,500 bags of dog poop from more than 4,000 people, removing half of the cities dog feces from streets and sidewalks.

For each bag turned over to the government a lottery ticket was awarded and eventually a 50-something woman claimed the top prize, a gold ingot worth $2,200.  Government officials also provided 85 other people with prizes ranging from smaller gold pieces to household appliances. This may be the first time that non-dog owners in the city weren’t complaining about other people’s dogs leaving messes in the middle of the cities streets."

MP: Good example of how "incentives matter."

No comments:

Post a Comment