Identifying the effective and ineffective configurations of the mandatory waste management policy in China: a qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

Mandating domestic waste separation is essential for solving the urban waste crisis, but it remains unclear what kind of mandatory policy in detail is more effective or counterproductive. This current study described the mandatory policy of waste separation as a configuration of five attributes, i.e. economic punishment, social punishment, supervision, charges, and community governance. Based on data mining and text analysis of the messages from Sina Weibo, the concurrent effects of those attributes were analysed by a qualitative comparative analysis from 44 pilot cities in China. The study found three configurations of high willingness by residents to separate waste, which all require different mandatory policy attributes working together. Specifically, H1a is the combination of supervision, community governance, and economic punishment; and H1b is a combination of social punishment, community governance, and economic punishment. In configuration H2, supervision and community governance are core conditions, while charges and economic punishment are not necessary.

Keywords:

• waste separation
• mandatory policy
• configuration perspective
• qualitative comparative analysis

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 72174137, 72104172, 71373170, 71602136) and the Humanity and Social Science Foundation Project of Ministry of Education of China (Grant Nos. 21YJA630060).