Dumping, waste management and ecological security: Evidence from England

Abstract

Illegal waste dumping has been widely regarded as one of the biggest source of environmental damage. Waste facilities management is an important way of combating illegal dumping for environmental protection and sustainability. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis on the determinants of illegal waste dumping based on panel data of England for a period of 7 years (2008–2014) using count data models, to access the effects of different drivers (economic, institution, policy). To be more specific the results show that (1) the increase of landfill cost (including landfill tax and landfill gate fee) have significant negative impact on the occurrence of illegal dumping (2) more waste landfill facilities, income level and intensity of penalty discourage illegal dumping. Such findings are robust using all models. The results indicate the main challenges in combating illegal waste dumping and the respective actions needed from the point of legal factors (i.e., law enforcement), institution factors (i.e., recycling rate, landfill dispersion) and economic factors (i.e., income level).