Evaluating Unit-Based Pricing of Residential Solid Waste: A Panel Data Analysis

Takehiro Usui () and Kenji Takeuchi

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2014, vol. 58, issue 2, 245-271

Abstract: Municipalities introduced unit-based pricing (UBP) with the aim of achieving a decrease in household waste generation and for the replacement of unsorted waste with recycling. Although many studies have shown that UBP has a short-run effect on recycling, few works have tackled the long-run effect on waste generation and recycling. By using panel data for 665 Japanese cities over 8 years, we examine the long-run effect of UBP on waste generation and recycling. The estimation results in waste generation suggest that there is a rebound effect, though a small one. We confirm that the effect of UBP on recycling sustains for the long run. We also find that the short- and long-run responses to an economic incentive for recycling activities differ with income groups. Recycling among the high-income group has not been promoted by implementation of UBP, but people in that group are willing to participate in recycling without an economic incentive. In contrast, recycling activity within the low-income group is strongly motivated by UBP for many years. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Unit-based pricing; Waste reduction; Recycling; Panel data analysis; Long-run effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10640-013-9702-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: EVALUATING UNIT-BASED PRICING OF RESIDENTIAL SOLID WASTE: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS (2012)
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:kap:enreec:v:58:y:2014:i:2:p:245-271

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-013-9702-7

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().