Tourism's impacts on the costs of municipal solid waste collection: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

Tourism is crucial to economic growth and has major environmental and social impacts. A key impact is the generation of municipal solid waste. Yet, whether and to what extent tourism increases the costs of solid waste collection has seen little attention. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impacts of tourism activities on the solid waste collection costs of different waste types. Analysing a sample of 68 Italian municipalities, we estimate the tourism's impacts on solid waste collection costs per waste type: organic, paper, multi-material (metal, plastic, glass), and residual undifferentiated. We find that the number of tourists, the number of overnight hotel stays, and tourists' spending significantly increase the collection costs of paper and paperboard, multi-material, and residual undifferentiated. Our findings suggest the need to distinguish between waste types in future investigations about the tourism as a cost driver. The results have interesting practical implications for the waste management systems and for municipalities' overall waste management policies.