Informational Green Nudges via Air-Quality Transparency: PM2.5 Monitoring, Environmental Awareness Campaigns, and Incense-Reduction Behavior at the Jianguo Li Tudigong Temple

PM2.5 governance in Taiwan has largely emphasized macro-scale source control, while high-exposure micro-environments embedded in everyday life, such as temple incense burning, often lack actionable, comprehensible information for residents. This study examines the Jianguo Li Tudigong (Earth God) Temple in Yingge District, New Taipei City, as a community-scale “informational nudge” intervention: micro-sensors and a real-time air-quality dashboard were installed, complemented by two temple-festival environmental awareness campaigns to encourage voluntary incense-reduction without constraining religious practice. 

We treat the two environmental awareness campaigns as intervention points and construct four monitoring periods (Periods 1–4) to enable pre- and post-comparisons under similar seasonal conditions, thereby reducing meteorological confounding. Measurement validity is strengthened through regular cross-calibration with reference-grade instruments and by subtracting the background PM2.5 from nearby regulatory stations to isolate local emissions attributable to on-site ritual activities. To account for fluctuations in visitor volume, donation income (incense-offering money) is used as a proxy for attendance and applied in normalization, helping distinguish behavioral change from simple crowd variation. Findings indicate an overall decline in PM2.5 following both environmental awareness campaigns, with the first intervention producing the largest reductions during peak visiting windows (9–11 a.m. and ~3 p.m.); the top 5% extreme concentrations decreased by 40-70 percent, demonstrating substantial mitigation of peak exposure risk. After the second campaign, the timing of high-concentration peaks shifted from the morning toward midday, consistent with behavioral responses, such as the temporal redistribution of visits to avoid higher-pollution hours.

Overall, the case provides empirical support for transparency-based green nudges as a culturally sensitive, low-cost, and replicable framework for improving air quality and reducing exposure risk in small-temple community settings.