Should cleanliness drives be incentivized to encourage people in India?

Rewards buy the early participation that makes a norm self-sustaining

Question: Should cleanliness drives be incentivized to encourage people in India?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, cleanliness drives should be incentivized to encourage people in India
Argument‹2 of 2: Rewards buy the early participation that makes a norm self-sustaining

The argument

The second case for incentives treats them as temporary rather than permanent, and rests on how norms of public behaviour actually change. Proponents argue that whether a person keeps a shared space clean depends heavily on what they believe others are doing. Where a street is already clean, the cost of being the one who spoils it is social and immediate, and most people pay attention to it. Where a street is already soiled, an individual's restraint makes no visible difference and carries no social reward, so the same person behaves differently in the two settings without any change in their values. This produces a threshold: below a certain level of visible participation a drive looks futile and recruits nobody, while above it participation becomes self-reinforcing because each additional participant raises the cost of abstaining. The role of an incentive, on this account, is to get a drive across that threshold rather than to sustain it forever. Early participants are being asked to act when the norm is weakest and the reward thinnest, which is exactly when voluntary appeals perform worst. A reward compensates them for bearing that disadvantage, and once visible participation is established the norm itself begins to do the work the payment was doing. Proponents accept that this makes the design of the withdrawal essential, and that a scheme which pays indefinitely has failed at its own purpose. What they reject is the inference that because a permanent subsidy would be bad, a temporary one cannot be the thing that converts a stalled drive into a norm that no longer needs it.

Premises

[P1]Whether an individual keeps a public space clean depends substantially on their expectations about what others are doing. [P2] Participation is therefore self-reinforcing above a certain visible threshold and self-defeating below it, since restraint in an already soiled space carries no visible benefit or social reward. [P3] Early participants act when the norm is weakest and voluntary appeals perform worst, so they bear a disadvantage later participants do not. [C] Incentives should be used to carry a drive across the participation threshold and then withdrawn, because a temporary reward can establish a norm that afterwards sustains itself.

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the withdrawal almost never happens. Schemes acquire administrators, recipients and political sponsors, all of whom have reasons to continue them, and a programme that was justified as a bridge becomes a standing expense. They add that the threshold argument assumes the reward recruits the right participants, when in practice it attracts those most responsive to small payments rather than those whose example would shift local expectations. A deeper objection is that participation bought with money may not read as a norm at all: neighbours can see who is being paid, and what they learn is that cleaning is work for hire.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Treating participation as a threshold phenomenon understates how local the relevant expectations are; a street can hold a strong norm while the district around it holds none, in which case there is no single threshold for a scheme to cross. [Rejecting P3] Compensating early participants selects for those most responsive to small payments rather than those whose example would shift expectations, so the disadvantage is paid for without the norm being built. [Rejecting C] The conclusion depends on the withdrawal actually happening, and schemes acquire administrators, recipients and sponsors with every reason to continue them, so the temporary bridge becomes a standing expense.