Macro-Social Marketing and Barriers to Effective Waste Management: A Mixed Methods Study from Croatia

This study examines how upstream institutional rigidity in EU-funded waste-management interventions shapes downstream municipal outcomes through macro-social marketing dynamics. Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines propensity score matching across 100 Croatian municipalities, within-treatment heterogeneity analysis, and in-depth interviews with project managers. The findings show that while interventions generate short-term improvements in waste sorting, these gains diminish over time. Within-treatment heterogeneity analysis further indicates that recommended (non-mandatory) interventions are more closely associated with improved waste-sorting outcomes than mandatory measures. Qualitative evidence traces this pattern to institutional rigidity at the upstream level, which increases misalignment between policy design and local implementation by constraining co-design, market segmentation, and adaptation to heterogeneous municipal infrastructures. This misalignment weakens both the level and persistence of downstream waste-management outcomes. By integrating institutional theory with macro-social marketing, the study advances understanding of how upstream rigidity undermines long-term policy effectiveness and offers implications for the design of more sustainable marketing-oriented public interventions. Policymakers and practitioners are encouraged to adopt more holistic, user-centered approaches that enhance institutional flexibility, cross-level collaboration, and contextual responsiveness to improve intervention performance.