Abstract
Municipal household solid waste (MHSW) has become a serious problem in China over the course of the last two decades, resulting in significant side effects to the environment. Therefore, effective management of MHSW has attracted wide attention from both researchers and practitioners. Separate collection, the first and crucial step to solve the MHSW problem, however, has not been thoroughly studied to date. An empirical survey has been conducted among 387 households in Harbin, China in this study. We use Bayesian Belief Networks model to determine the influencing factors on separate collection. Four types of factors are identified, including political, economic, social cultural and technological based on the PEST (political, economic, social and technological) analytical method. In addition, we further analyze the influential power of different factors, based on the network structure and probability changes obtained by Netica software. Results indicate that technological dimension has the greatest impact on MHSW separate collection, followed by the political dimension and economic dimension; social cultural dimension impacts MHSW the least.
Highlights
Municipal Household Solid Waste (MHSW) in China has increased significantly due to the rapid economic development
MHSW separate collection is the prerequisite for the MHSW reduction [6] and causes fewer environmental problems than other solutions [7]
In order to improve the effectiveness of MHSW separate collection, it is necessary to analyze the influencing factors on separate collection, which will in turn return significant guidance in achieving the optimal resource utilization of MHSW [11]
Summary
Municipal Household Solid Waste (MHSW) in China has increased significantly due to the rapid economic development It causes serious pollution problems, which are not conducive to environment and human health [1,2], and retards sustainable development of society [3]. There were still 15 million tons of MHSW that had not been harmlessly treated in 2014, which caused a series of environmental problems [4,5]. This is mainly because of unsatisfactory levels of MHSW separate collection, which causes poor effectiveness of the subsequent processing. In order to improve the effectiveness of MHSW separate collection, it is necessary to analyze the influencing factors on separate collection, which will in turn return significant guidance in achieving the optimal resource utilization of MHSW [11]
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