A sustainable solution to promote interest-based municipal solid waste management

Abstract

Incineration is a crucial option for municipal solid waste (MSW) management. How to deal with the “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) movement in the construction of incineration stations has become a global public policy issue. This paper explores the impact of local authorities on MSW management when incineration is adopted to process municipal waste. The study uses four open cases from news reporting as the research data and applies the social network analysis (SNA) method for empirical analysis. Our results suggest that intervention by local authorities significantly improves the level of MSW management. The paper shows the following promotion mechanism: local authorities reconstructed the selected incentives of the residents who participated in the NIMBY movements based on their interests rather than on oppression. This is fundamentally different from the literature on how centralized regimes deal with protests. This paper addresses the need to research incineration stations’ impact on MSW management. It provides a specific reference for formulating policy recommendations that are relevant to green finance for MSW management.