Establishment of a New Urban Solid Waste Management Programs in Mazandaran Province, North of Iran

This study reports residents’ preferences to establish a new urban solid waste management programs results from a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method and choice experiment in Mazandaran province, north of Iran. In order to analysis the residents’ preferences, a dichotomous hypothetical market and a choice sets with different attributes and options were used For estimation of two mentioned methods, the normal logit and conditional logit were applied. In addition, an empirical comparison of the welfare measures derived from the doublebounded DC-CVM and CE is conducted. The main results show that there is no significant difference between the values derived from the two methods. The mean of WTP to establish a new solid waste management programs in CV and CE were estimated 2.45 and 2.61 US$, respectively, per a person per a month. Also the estimated marginal WTP for all attributes in CE was 8.1 US$ per a month. The results suggest that both double-bounded DC-CVM and CE can be successfully stablished for improvement environmental level quality in Mazandaran province. This paper could provide the basis for further development of other new programs on sustainable urban management of solid waste in Mazandaran province.

Keywords
Dichotomous choice; Willingness to pay; Solid waste management; Mazandaran province; Iran