From the NYTimes magazine (Dog-Waste Management):
In 1978, New York enacted its famous (and widely imitated) "pooper scooper" law, and the city is plainly cleaner, poop-wise, than it was.
But with a fine of just $50 for the first offense, the law doesn't provide much financial incentive to pick up after your dog. Nor does it seem to be vigorously enforced. Let's pretend that 99 percent of all dog owners do obey the law. That still leaves 10,000 dogs whose poop is left in public spaces each day. Over the last year, the city ticketed only 471 dog-waste violations, which suggests that the typical offender stands a roughly 1-in-8,000 chance of getting a ticket. So here's a puzzle: why do so many people pick up after their dogs? This would seem to be a case in which social incentives - the hard glare of a passer-by and the offender's feelings of guilt - are at least as powerful as financial and legal incentives.
This is the same puzzle, it seems to me, as environmental regs. Enforcement is costly so everyone isn't checked by the gov't, firms are required to self-report their own emissions data, and yet, except for a few (many?) rogues, firms seem to stick with the program and air and water quality has significantly improved in the past 30 years. Economic theory predicts more cheating, I think. Go figure.
Dubner and Levitt go on to suggest a $30 million doggie DNA program to nab those who don't scoop. Whoa. Is dog poop a $30+ million problem in NYC? Using their assumptions, 10,000 dogs whose poop isn't scooped daily, about 3.5 million piles are left on the street each year. The social cost of each pile must be $10 or so to justify the program. I dunno.
