Adopting a Unit Pricing System for Municipal Solid Waste: Policy and Socio-Economic Determinants

Scott Callan and Janet Thomas

Environmental & Resource Economics, 1999, vol. 14, issue 4, 503-518

Abstract: Concerns about the environmental and aesthetic damages of municipal solid waste pollution have triggered policy reform at all levels of government. As part of this effort, public officials are integrating market-based policy instruments such as unit pricing into their solid waste plans. Despite the economic advantages of unit pricing, constituency response has been mixed and hence adoption rates have been below expectations. If the associated gains are to be realized, public officials must identify the key factors that influence this decision. To that end, this research empirically estimates the determinants of unit pricing adoption at the community level of analysis. Based on data for all cities and towns in Massachusetts, the results indicate that demographics, socio-economic attributes, fiscal capacity, and policy instruments influence this decision. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

Keywords: flat fee system; government policy; material recycling facility; municipal solid waste; unit pricing system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008315305404 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:enreec:v:14:y:1999:i:4:p:503-518

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

DOI: 10.1023/A:1008315305404

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 ().