Abstract
<jats:p>Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a major source of air, water and soil pollution in Latin America and the Caribbean. To address this problem, policy makers in the region often rely on providing SMEs with information on pollution control and prevention, an approach reputed to be both less demanding of regulatory resources than conventional command-and-control policies, and less costly for SMEs. However, counterfactual evidence about the effectiveness of informational interventions is scarce. To help fill that gap, this monograph presents results from a set of three harmonized randomized controlled trials that evaluate informational interventions aimed at boosting energy efficiency of SMEs in Mexico, spurring the use of sustainable packaging by small restaurants in Honduras, and cutting food waste by small restaurants in Peru. Although the main results from the three studies are inconclusive, several findings and observations are noteworthy. First, all three studies document institutional barriers to the effectiveness of the informational intervention they studiedincluding complex energy pricing in Mexico, thin markets for sustainable packaging in Honduras, and a lack of solid waste treatment facilities in Peruwhich may help explain their null results. This finding suggests that there may not be as much low-hanging fruit to be captured by informational interventions targeting developing country SMEs as advocates claim. Second, the one study that collected baseline and endline data on intermediate outcomes such as knowledge about pollution prevention finds that the intervention had statistically significant effects on these outcomes. Finally, researchers evaluating the efficacy of informational interventions in the Global South should anticipate serious implementation challenges due to attrition, noncompliance, and measurement error and should proactively design their studies to mitigate these threats to their experiments ability to deliver high-quality evidence.</jats:p>