the most popular tax in europe lessons from the irish plastic bags levy there have been occasional ad hoc efforts to influence consumer behaviour by the imposition of product taxes that reflect external costs imposed by such products that are not initially included in their price in the spirit of this idea in 2002 ireland introduced a 15 euro cent tax on plastic shopping bags previously provided free of charge to customers at points of sale the effect of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets has been dramatic a reduction in use in the order of 90 and an associated gain in the form of reduced littering and negative landscape effects costs of administration have been very low amounting to about 3 of revenues because it was possible to integrate reporting and collection into existing value added tax reporting systems response from the main stakeholders the public and the retail industry has been overwhelmingly positive central to this acceptance has been a policy of extensive consultation with these stakeholders the fact that a product tax can influence consumer behaviour significantly will be of interest to many policymakers in this area this paper analyses the plastic bag levy success story and provides insights and general guidelines for other jurisdictions planning similar proposals

efficiency effects of unit based pricing systems and institutional choices of waste collection municipal residential waste costs are rising therefore it is important to introduce measures that lower waste collection and disposal costs based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing systems are more important from a cost minimizing point of view than the institutional mode of waste collection in particular the bag based and frequency based pricing systems are preferred moreover dividing the cost effects between cost price and quantity effects we illustrate that lower administrative costs and a smaller waste quantity are the most important drivers of cost decreases it also shows that a disadvantage of the bag based system is that it is not easy to price compostable waste in addition if more general cost functions are analyzed these estimations suggest that there are economies of scale for small municipalities

do not trash the incentive monetary incentives and waste sorting this paper examines whether combining non monetary and monetary incentives increases municipal solid waste sorting we empirically investigate this issue exploiting the exogenous variation in waste management policies experienced during the years 1999 2008 by the 95 municipalities in the district of treviso italy using a panel regression analysis we estimate that pay as you throw payt incentive schemes increase by 17 the sorted to total waste ratio and that their effect reinforces that of a door to door dtd collection system which is equal to 15 7 moreover the panel structure of our dataset allows us to find learning and spatial effects associated to both payt and dtd

measuring the economic benefits of recycling the case of the waste agricultural film in korea recently increase of the waste agricultural film waf raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in korea the korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage the objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the waf using contingent valuation method aiming to provide policy makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the waf the overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the waf the mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 korean won us 3 6 and 5730 korean won us 4 4 respectively total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14 33 billion korean won us 11 02 million per year this quantitative information can be use

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

estimating consumer willingness to supply and willingness to pay for curbside recycling we estimate the willingness to pay for curbside recycling based on a contingent valuation survey of 600 residents of a large southeastern united states city the best estimate of willingness to pay for curbside recycling is 2 29 month after adjustment for hypothetical bias we also report the results of a field experiment designed to test the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives and communication appeals to influence the decision to recycle and the quantity of materials to recycle while households respond to the monetary cost of recycling the effects of the token ex ante incentives and appeals appear to be small jel d61 q21

on the second best policy of household s waste recycling this study analyzes the second best household s waste recycling policy if we assume the first best economy with no illegal disposal or transaction costs then unit pricing an advance disposal fee and a recycling subsidy are required in order to achieve the social optimum such that both the sum of unit pricing and an advance disposal fee and the sum of unit pricing and a recycling subsidy are equal to the marginal disposal cost furthermore the first best outcome can also be obtained by a producer take back requirement system in the real economy however various factors prevent the first best optimal outcome in this study we consider two factors one being the transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or refund and the other being illegal disposal by the consumer if a recycling subsidy or a deposit refund system is adopted a transaction cost associated with it will be generated alternatively if unit pricing is adopted some of the consumed goods may be disposed of illegally we show the complete trade off between unit pricing and a recycling subsidy in other words we can not adopt unit pricing and a recycling subsidy simultaneously as a result there are three candidates for the second best policy unit pricing with an advance disposal fee a deposit refund system and a producer take back requirement system which of these three policies is the second best policy will depend on the relative magnitude of the price of a recycled good and the marginal transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or the refund in a deposit refund system generally if the price of a recycled good is positive and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high unit pricing with an advance disposal fee is the second best policy however where the price of a recycled good is negative and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high a producer take back requirement system is the second best policy further where the marginal transaction cost is relatively low a deposit refund system is the second best policy regardless of whether the price of a recycled good is positive or negative

curbside recycling in the presence of alternatives we measure the extent to which curbside access affects quantity recycled we use novel data to distinguish between new recycling and material diverted from other recycling modes we find that the marginal impact of expanding curbside programs on total recycled quantities is small in part because curbside programs significantly cannibalize returns from drop off recycling centers failure to account for cannibalization from other modes may substantially over estimate the benefits of curbside programs we conclude with simple cost effectiveness comparisons results suggest that incremental expansion of curbside access may not be cost effective

the determinants of household recycling social influence public policies and environmental preferences abstractour article aims at understanding the determinants of households selective waste sorting behaviours based on data from an original survey of 694 individuals in the french provence alpes cote d azur region the applied literature focuses mainly on countries with high recycling rates we focus on a region with the lowest recycling rate in france a country that recycles less than the european country average we first apply polychoric principal components analysis to reduce the number of explanatory variables to a set of six factors in a second step we use a probit model to estimate the probability of waste sorting as a function of these factors this model tests several hypotheses emerging from the recent literature on behavioural economics applied to households selective sorting this literature pays particular attention to the social influence on recycling behaviour which has been studied mostly by sociologists and psychologists the results of our empirical analysis confirm some of the fin

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

greenhouse gas emissions waste and recycling policy abstract this paper examines least cost policies for waste reduction incorporating upstream greenhouse gas externalities associated with the production of consumption goods from various materials in particular we decompose the effect of deposit refund advance disposal fees and recycling subsidies on upstream greenhouse gas emissions we find that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of the same order as or larger than the benefits of reducing solid waste disposal implying larger optimal total waste reduction than previous studies furthermore the least cost intervention levels will be material specific and vary substantially across materials finally despite the reductions in emissions implied by increased recycling rates direct recycling subsidies are more costly and generate less emissions reductions than a deposit refund or advance disposal fee

the effect of bottle laws on income new empirical results eleven us states have bottle laws deposit refund programs that combine a consumption tax with a recycling rebate when states set the bottle deposit low enough it becomes a tax on high wage earners for whom the opportunity cost of their time prevents them from returning containers for their deposit however this bottle deposit will still be high enough that harvesting recyclables provides employment for low wage earners using individual data on observed cash recycling behavior this paper shows that an unintended consequence of bottle laws is that they have the potential to increase the incomes of very low wage workers

nimby taxes matter the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes this paper links the theoretical and empirical literatures on interjurisdictional tax and regulatory competition focusing on the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes it begins by demonstrating that local environmental taxes can be inefficient and that the inefficiency depends on the tax elasticity of polluters responses the paper then uses panel data from the toxics release inventory to estimate the magnitude of the tax elasticities and to demonstrate the empirical relevance of the theoretical inefficiency of local taxes 1999 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

environmental cleanliness as a public good welfare and policy implications of nonconvex preferences abstract this paper explores the implications of a form of nonconvexity in individual preferences over the public good cleanliness the implications of this nonconvexity on equilibrium outcomes welfare analysis the process of development and optimal government policy are examined the nonconvexity can imply a role for government in providing a commitment to a clean environment even if the government has a cost disadvantage in cleaning compared with individuals by providing a credible commitment to a clean environment the government can induce private individuals to undertake optimal levels of cleaning on their own

garbage and recycling with endogenous local policy abstract this paper estimates the impact of garbage fees and curbside recycling programs on garbage and recycling amounts without correction for endogenous policy a price per bag of garbage has a negative effect on garbage and a positive cross price effect on recycling correction for endogenous local policy increases the effect of the user fee on garbage and the effect of curbside recycling collection on recycling introducing a fee of 1 per bag is estimated to reduce garbage by 412 pounds per person per year 44 but to increase recycling by only 30 pounds per person per year

an eu recycling target what does the dutch evidence tell us the european union eu advocates a household waste recycling rate of more than 65 although the netherlands has already invested heavily in recycling policies this is still a big challenge as nowadays this rate is approximately 50 on average and very few no municipalities have a rate above 65 given this practice it is possible to learn from the dutch experience which policies are effective in increasing recycling rates based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing avoiding a duo bin for unsorted and compostable waste and reducing the frequency of collecting unsorted and compostable waste at the curbside are effective in raising the recycling rate however only a bag based pricing system has a substantial effect but this policy can have some adverse effects other unit based pricing systems have effects of less than 10 points in nearly all cases changing the frequency of collection of recyclables has no or very small effects moreover the complementarity between unit based pricing and curbside service is low overall it seems very difficult to reach the eu goal of 65 with the policies applied

service multinationals conceptualization measurement and theory the application of mne definitions measurements and theories to international services is still in its infancy despite the considerable size and growth of this sector there are problems in defining classifying measuring comparing and explaining service mnes but they do not require special definitions and theories still research to date suggests 1 delinking the concepts of multinational enterprise and foreign direct investment under certain conditions and 2 qualifying the nature of ownership internalization and location advantages in fdi theory as far as service mnes are concerned

does garbage pricing increase the immoral disposal of household waste abstractsome empirical studies have attempted to clarify the mechanism of illegal dumping by examining the degree to which per bag pricing plays a role however previous research on the behaviour of avoiding paying a charge for waste collection has tended to neglect so called immoral disposal which is less risky than illegal dumping because there is no legal penalty in this study we define immoral disposal as the dumping of waste in a manner that is immoral but not illegal to detect the existence of immoral disposal we apply a spatial econometric approach namely an extended panel spatial durbin model to identify the actual spillover effect of garbage pricing in neighbouring municipalities on immoral disposal from the total waste a major finding of this study is that immoral disposal exists in unit based pricing two tiered pricing and fixed pricing

evaluating unit based pricing of residential solid waste a panel data analysis 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