Should Cities Issue Prizes Instead of Tickets?

At a very basic and general level there are two dominant schools of thought when it comes to rules: reward those in compliance or punish those out of compliance. Punishment tends to be the most common of the two. It’s a lot easier to notice somebody doing the wrong or illegal thing than running around trying to pat everyone on the back for not breaking the rules. But when the scales tip and breaking the rules becomes the norm, it may be time to switch up the strategy.

This is the path taken recently by New Taipei City in Taiwan. The city had been struggling with sanitation and cleanliness as dog owners weren’t doing a great job of cleaning up after their animals. In response the city set up a lottery to reward residents for picking up the poo. As the BBC reports, more than 4,000 people collected about 14,500 bags of dog poop and turned them in. For each bag received (presumably by some extremely unlucky city official), residents were given one ticket for the lottery. Various prizes were awarded over the course of the lottery program, including the grand prize earlier this week: a solid gold ingot valued at about $2,200. In total, 85 prizes were handed out.