Spatial inequality in municipal solid waste disposal across regions in developing countries

The regional inequalities in socio-economical characteristics such as income, population density, age composition, unemployment rate and the education level may bring about variation in waste generation, recycling and collection. Using environmental Kuznets curve, the factors affecting municipal solid waste disposal are examined. The results demonstrate that an inverted N-shaped curve executes on municipal solid waste disposal for all regions. As personal disposable income increases, per capita municipal solid waste disposed firstly declines, then grows at the second stage and finally decreases again. All the explanatory variables including economic factors, social characteristics and geographical barriers are found to influence municipal solid waste disposal significantly. Each person increase in population density leads to an increase in municipal solid waste disposed by approximately 1.17 x 10^-4 kg/day. Each percent increase in age composition results in a decrease in municipal solid waste disposed by approximately 0.0224 kg/day; in the unemployment rate causes a decrease of 0.0901 kg/day and in the education level results in a decrease of 0.01556 kg/day. In general, municipal solid waste disposal starts to increase at the first turning point of personal disposable income NT$ 198,000 (about US$ 6,280) and to decrease at the second point of NT$ 389,000 (about US$ 12,350) for all regions (pooled data). The rural regions, however, cannot support the inverted N-shaped curve by the 'reduced form' while urban regions have a significant outcome. This result implies that income can only explain a portion of variation while other social and geographical factors contribute a lot to identify the variation in municipal solid waste disposal between urban and rural regions.

Keywords
Environmental Kuznets curve; Municipal solid waste; Recycling behavior; Turning point; Waste disposal; Waste generation