Abstract
This paper examines how and to what degree government policies of garbage fees and voluntary source separation programs, with free indoor containers and garbage bags, can affect the effectiveness of municipal solid waste (MSW) management, in the sense of achieving a desirable reduction of per capita MSW generation. Based on city-level panel data for years 1998–2012 in China, our empirical analysis indicates that per capita MSW generated is increasing with per capita disposable income, average household size, education levels of households, and the lagged per capita MSW. While both garbage fees and source separation programs have separately led to reductions in per capita waste generation, the interaction of the two policies has resulted in an increase in per capita waste generation due to the following crowding-out effects: Firstly, the positive effect of income dominates the negative effect of the garbage fee. Secondly, there are crowding-out effects of mandatory charging system and the subsidized voluntary source separation on per capita MSW generation. Thirdly, small subsidies and tax punishments have reduced the intrinsic motivation for voluntary source separation of MSW. Thus, compatible fee charging system, higher levels of subsidies, and well-designed public information and education campaigns are required to promote household waste source separation and reduction.
Highlights
Municipal solid waste (MSW) has been challenging the policy design of environment management around the world, especially for the fast growing cities in developing countries [1,2,3]
MSW refers to the weight of MSW collected and transported in this study.Separation is a dummy variable indicating the phase of source separation policy which equals zero for years before the city started implementing the source separation policy and one for the first implementation year and all subsequent years; Feeit is the yearly payment of each household for waste service in city i in year t; Xit is a set of other potential covariates, including per capita disposable income, household size, dependency rate, and education level; αi is the time-invariant and city-specific effect; εit is an error term with Epμitq “ 0 for all i and t, capturing all other omitted factors; and γ, ρ, δ and β are parameters to be estimated
Utilizing city-level panel data from China covering the period 1998–2012, this study empirically examined the impacts of garbage fees and source separation programs with small subsidies on per capita MSW generation, and especially focused on their combined effect
Summary
Municipal solid waste (MSW) has been challenging the policy design of environment management around the world, especially for the fast growing cities in developing countries [1,2,3]. Based on a cross-sectional data model, Kinnaman and Fullerton [14] argue that PAYT systems have significantly reduced waste generation but that recycling programs are relatively ineffective. Jenkins and Martinez [15] and Park and Berry [16] document that recycling programs rather than unit pricing system have enhanced the recycling rate through a similar cross-sectional multiple regression analysis. Inconsistent with both the foregoing results, Sidique et al [17] and Lakhan [18] conclude that both variable pricing and recycling programs have effectively increased the recycling rate of MSW
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