Material governance and circularity policies: How waste policies and innovation affect household appliances' accumulation

Matteo Mazzarano

Ecological Economics, 2022, vol. 200, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates the macro-economic drivers of accumulation and recycling of material capital from in-use Stock of a class of durable goods: Electrical and Electronic Equipment. This category is relevant for the European policy's objectives for its content of critical raw materials and its relevance in the Digital Agenda. A theoretical model and empirical estimations over a EU27 + UK national panel are developed to understand the optimal dynamic of accumulation, innovation, and recycling. The former is growth models supporting a theory of stock accumulation and stock diversity. This framework is used to delineate possible biases of the empirical analysis, which is made throughout a panel data model estimation. The panel uses weight per capita and Shannon concentration index as target variables to address the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Dummies proxied the Waste Packages of 2008 and 2012 to control for breaks. The results show the high significance of the panel data model within each Stratum of EU states. Waste policies are strongly correlated to increasing EEE material accumulation rather than a reduction ceteris paribus. Socio-economic variables are generally significant, with evidence of economic activity decoupling EEE stock. Lastly, the increase in average durability is positively correlated to material accumulation.

Keywords: Material capital; In-use stock; Circular economy; Innovation; Waste policies; Electrical and electronic equipment; Environmental Kuznets Curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922002002
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:200:y:2022:i:c:s0921800922002002

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107538

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().