Promoting public participation in household waste management: A survey based method and case study in Xiamen city, China

Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 313e322

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Promoting public participation in household waste management: A survey based method and case study in Xiamen city, China Lishan Xiao a, b, Guoqin Zhang a, b, Yan Zhu c, Tao Lin a, b, * a

Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China Xiamen Key Lab of Urban Metabolism, Xiamen 361021, China c Department of Environmental Systems and Societies, Wuxi Foreign Language School, 214131, China b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 19 February 2016 Received in revised form 19 December 2016 Accepted 5 January 2017 Available online 6 January 2017

Limited success in 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) implementation and conflicts in waste treatment plant construction call for active and sustained public participation in Chinese waste management. It is especially important to identify factors which affect citizen participation in waste reduction and recycling where waste policies are poorly implemented. In this paper we report the results of a researchconstructed survey conducted in Xiamen, one of eight cities in China which have been operating waste source separation pilot programs since 2000. The results showed that while more than half of respondents were satisfied with local waste management, waste recycling was still inefficient and largely carried out by the informal sector. Satisfaction rates and basic residential house prices were positively correlated, and the satisfaction rate was higher in newly urbanizing areas than in old downtown and urban village areas. A structural equation model was used to identify key factors influencing citizen environmental willingness to participate in waste management, and this indicated that the most important influencing factor was citizen knowledge, followed by social motivation, while institutional factors had the smallest positive effect. Citizens who were better informed and lived in a community/ family with more environmentally friendly behaviors have a greater propensity to participate in sustainable waste management. The model is useful for identifying causal relationships and ranking influencing factors in terms of their importance. The results indicate a waste policy hierarchy in Chinese cities, and future waste management should change from the current legislative-centered strategy. The results can be used to inform decision makers find locally effective strategies to improve public participation in waste management in accordance with socioeconomic and cultural conditions in China. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Source separation Structural equation model Rapid urbanization Public participation

1. Introduction Waste management (WM) is an important service provided by local governments, but was traditionally regarded as an isolated environmental problem requiring technical engineering solutions before 2000. Techniques tended to focus on dealing with one type of waste, leading to a focus on single technologies instead of the waste management system. Consequentially, one waste problem can be solved, but other waste problems are often generated (Dijkema et al., 2000). As a complex adaptive system, WM requires a systematic approach which integrates environmental

* Corresponding author. Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Lin). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.01.022 0959-6526/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

effectiveness, social acceptability, and economic affordability. However, compared to technical issues, social-economic dimensions of municipal solid waste (MSW) management have not attracted sufficient attention from researchers around the globe (Ma and Hipel., 2016). The effectiveness of waste management directly affects the sustainability of a city (Othman et al., 2013), but WM in many developing countries only becomes a priority for urban planners and decision makers when basic needs such as food and livelihoods have already been met (Marshall and Farahbakhsh, 2013; Wilson, 2007). In addition, among socio-environmental concerns, more attention is usually given to water distribution and drainage. While WM receives less public attention and support, and is usually one of the least developed urban public sectors (Cave, 2014). Due to an unprecedented rate and scale of urbanization, China is undergoing an extremely rapid growth in MSW and has become the

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world’s largest waste generator. Waste generation and treatment rates have surpassed the urbanization rate, and despite considerable financial investment, WM has had limited success in implementing “3R” (reduce, reuse, recycle) principles (Huang et al., 2014). Setting up and improving end-pipe treatment facilities accounted for 73.6% of financial investment by the Chinese government between 2011 and 2015, while transportation and collection facilities accounted for 13.3%, food waste treatment facilities 4.1%, waste separation pilot projects only 8.0%, and the supervision system 1.0% (GOSCC, 2012). About 93.4% of Chinese MSW was treated by landfill or incineration in 2013 and 66.08% in 2008, but only a few facilities were available for waste recycling and source separation. Recent citizen campaigns to block construction of nearby incineration plants have transformed China’s waste problem into a source of social conflict. From 2009 to 2014, residents in 12 cities protested incineration projects as a result of environmental concerns, and only 3 incineration projects were accepted while the others were cancelled or deferred. Investigations have indicated that such protests are usually related to public perception of environmental justice, inequitable distribution of risk, lack of trust in authorities and other political issues (Guidotti et al., 2008; Giaccaria and Frontuto, 2010; Sun et al., 2016). China has launched pilot programs for source separation in eight cities since the year 2000, but the assessment of these cities has demonstrated a poor performance (Tai et al., 2011). Few cities have officially reported a recycling rate, and the paper recycling rate was less than 25% in Beijing, a pilot city for waste separation (Song, 2015). Policies and technologies imported from developed countries are often not well adapted to developing countries, because more than half of municipal waste is composed of organic material which is unsuitable for disposal by landfill or incineration (Xiao et al., 2015). Without separation, incineration encounters a range of problems including unsteady and unstable combustion, incomplete combustion, and increased formation of air pollutants due high moisture and low energy content (Cheng et al., 2007). The costs of capital, operating, and maintenance for domestically developed facilities are only 1/3 to 1/2 of those of imported ones (Cheng and Hu, 2010). Waste composition indicates that there is great potential for increased composting and recycling in China. But composting has been an unpopular choice of MSW management primarily because of insufficient food waste and unreliable sources with low nutrient content and heavy metals in compost products (Cheng and Hu., 2010). The issue of food waste treatment is becoming more serious as landfill capacity limits are being reached. Local governments in China nowadays face a dilemma in both source separation and treatment facility construction. Public participation is recognized as the main path toward sustainable WM and plays a vital role in environmental conflict management as it can bridge the gap between government and citizens (Joseph, 2006; Lin et al., 2010). WM strategies based on waste separation and recycling will only be successful if they achieve widespread public support, and so Chinese cities must develop comprehensive and locally effective public participation strategies to face WM challenges. 2. Literature review Although WM systems are becoming more aware of the importance of considering multiple stakeholders, decision makers (governments/municipalities) and experts (technical supporters) are still the most active participants. Public awareness is now regarded as the most desirable driving factor of WM, rather than public health, resource scarcity or climate change (Diaz and Otoma, 2012). Local residents are non-ignorable stakeholders in both daily

WM and the decision making process (Garnett and Cooper, 2014; Tai et al., 2011). The structure and functions of public participation are founded on the performance patterns and attitudes of people, which are shaped by the local cultural and social context (Schubeler, 1996). Thus, the present challenge for WM is to enhance public participation, so as to fully incorporate local community opinion into specific policymaking, making it necessary to explore which factors promote public participation. Along with the development of technical solutions, increasing emphasis is now given to strategies based on promoting individual behaviors in developed countries (Vicente and Reis, 2008). Demographic variables (age, gender and household typology) were most frequently investigated by empirical studies, but the roles of the variables were always distinct, and varied across different socioeconomic background (Qu et al., 2007; Valle et al., 2004; Vicente and Reis, 2008). Knowledge and recycling time were positively related to participation willingness (Vicente and Reis, 2008; Cox et al., 2010; Gellynck et al., 2011), and spatial factors were also important influences on waste generation. MSW had some obvious concentration patterns which indicated that waste generation differed from region to region (Zhang et al., 2015). Attitude and social/personal norms received more attention in developed countries as supported by a cognitive psychological model, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991; Cheung, 1999; Tonglet et al., 2004). An extended TPB was constructed to examine factors associated with household waste behaviors in Iran, and moral obligation and social-economic background were addressed in a recycling program (Pakpour et al., 2014). Pilot recycling projects have included the use of economic incentives, legislation and public education motivate citizens, but it is difficult to determine the precise effects of these factors by direct observation, and previous research has suggested an inconsistent relationship between these factors and individual behaviors (Valle et al., 2004). Previous research has hardly addressed the causal relationship, and the importance of each potential influencing factor remains uncertain. It is difficult to fully understand public participation and provide effective government intervention without first understanding the contributions of all the influencing factors. In China, little research has focused on public willingness to participate in WM and its influencing factors, and the importance of these factors has not yet been well evaluated. Local context is important and design of a successful scheme may not necessarily be replicable elsewhere (Tucker et al., 2000). It is unlikely that the conclusions drawn from foreign studies and management theories will be automatically applicable in China, due to rapid increases in MSW generation, differences in waste composition, culture/social attitudes as well as the legislative environment. Diagnosing the importance of each factor in explaining participation willingness is an important tool to support future actions and communication strategies to enhance people’s involvement in WM programs. Based on previous research and the Chinese context, we hypothesized that several factors influenced people’s willingness to participate in WM: (1) knowledge about how to be involved, including information, facilities and method; (2) institutions to formulate people’s behaviors, including laws and regulations; (3) motivation to improve people’s involvement, including incentives and moral norms. This paper aimed to test the hypothesis and improve understanding of the factors influencing household willingness to participate in WM by reporting the results of a questionnaire survey in Xiamen, a rapidly urbanizing city in southeast China. The survey used an extensive sampling approach to evaluate citizen knowledge, satisfaction, and opinions. Structural equation models (SEM) were used to evaluate the influence of various factors involving multiple causal pathways among variables. SEMs are

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increasingly used in ecology and environmental research as multivariate analysis that can represent theoretical variables and address complex sets of hypotheses. The results can identify causal relationships between household willingness to participate in WM and its influencing factors. 2.1. Study area Medium-sized cities with population less than 5 million comprise the more than 50% of China’s urban and town system. As China’s largest cities faced many serious environmental problems, the central government began to introduce polices to control the number of large cities and promote medium-sized cities, and this policy was also included in the City Planning Law (Zhou et al., 2013). Compared with large cities, medium-sized cities are believed to more efficient and allow for greater flexibility in management and resource application, and as a result are considered vital for the sustainability of China’s urbanization (Zhao et al., 2009). Previous research on waste management in China has usually focused on mega-cities with more than 10 million population and high urbanization rates (Zhang et al., 2012; Lu et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2015), but there are also many medium-sized cities, such as Xiamen, with are experiencing rapid urbanization, economic development and waste generation. Xiamen city (Fig. 1) has a terrestrial area of 1573 km2, and a resident population of 3.67 million. Since being designated in the 1980s as a “Special Economic Zone” (SEZ), Xiamen has experienced rapid economic development and urbanization, with GDP per capita reaching US$14,135in 2014, about 20 times higher (inflation adjusted) than the pre-SEZ period, and the urbanization rate has increased steadily from 38.5% to 80.5%. Xiamen is one of the eight pilot cities which initiated waste separation more than a decade ago, and WM is evolving from mixed to source-separated collection and treatment. Three trash bins were made available in pilot communities to separate waste into food waste, recyclable waste and others. Waste generation has increased from 240,000 tons in 1996 to 1.3 million tons in 2014. Every resident produced 0.94 kg/ d waste in 2014, 1.23 times higher than in 1996. If the current momentum of urban development is maintained, MSW will increase to 6812 t/d by 2020, about twice as large as the present value (Xu et al., 2013). One landfill plant has already been sealed due to limited capacity since 2009, and the municipality has invested more than 1.3 billion RMB in waste treatment. A landfill plant and an incineration plant with capacities of 2500 t/d and 400 t/d respectively were built in 2009, and in 2013 about 67.3% of MSW was treated by landfill, 30.5% by incineration, and only 2.2% was reused. Odor emission has led to protests by residents living near the landfill site, and if landfill capacity is reached in a few years, MSW treatment will become even more problematic. Xiamen can be categorized into peri-urban, ex-urban and urban core areas, according to the extent of urbanization (Ren et al., 2012), with the highly urbanized area located on Xiamen Island. The island’s built-up area, GDP and population account for more than half of the whole city, as well as 60% of MSW generation. We took the urban core area on Xiamen Island as the case study area, and applied a multi-object spatial sampling method to balance the cost of sampling with the desired sampling precision, taking into account the spatial demographics of residential communities. The theoretical basis for spatial sampling is to determine the optimal relationship between estimation error, sampling density and spatial arrangement of samples in the spatial context for objects that are distributed continuously or discretely in space through direct or indirect estimating approaches (Wang et al., 2012). This method has been used for sampling and statistical inference in environment, resources, land, ecological, social and economic

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sciences. The spatial distribution characteristics in the survey included topography, population density, standard land price and building density. Some 30 residential communities were finally selected as survey sites (Fig. 2), and the respondents accounted for 0.13% of the total households in the downtown area of the city. This method was able to attain higher precision given the limited survey budget (Wang et al., 2013). 3. Methods 3.1. Survey design The data for people’s willingness to participate in WM related to WM and its influencing factors were derived from an onsite questionnaire survey conducted in the targeted communities in 2012 (Table 1). The survey was conducted by door-to-door interview. The respondents were given a full explanation of the study and were assured of the confidentiality of their responses. The questionnaire had three main sections (see Table 2). The items were constructed based on prior studies TPB theory and evidence from previous studies, as well as content analysis conducted with staff at the Environmental Sanitary Department of Xiamen city who are responsible for WM in the city. The first section included WM satisfaction and how to deal with recyclable waste and food waste. The second section included two items designed to evaluate respondents’ willingness to participate in waste separation and payment, the future WM scenarios. These items were measured by a five-point Likert-type scale from 5 (to a great extent)to 1 (to no extent); this scale is widely used to assess respondents’ attitude about the sustainable strategies (Sarmentoa et al., 2007; Zheng et al., 2013). Cronbach’s alpha is an internal consistency estimate of test scores and increases as the intercorrelations between test items increase; if the value is less than 0.5, the reliability is considered to be unacceptable. The third section included 9 items intended to measure the importance of various incentives encouraging separation/recycling and unit-charging from 5 (strongly agree) to1 (strongly disagree) (Table 1). Out of a total of 747 interviews conducted, 38 samples were missing more than one variable in the second section, leaving 712 completed questionnaires which were considered valid and usable (retrieval rate of 95%). This sample represented 0.2% of the total households in the urbanized area. 3.2. Structural equation model The structural equations model (SEM) was used to analyze the factors influencing people’s willingness to participate in WM, based on a cross-sectional dataset. The advantage of the method is that each path coefficient quantifies the strength of a relationship (Santibanez-Andrade et al., 2015). SEM is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relations using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. SEM integrates factor analysis and path analysis, and examines the relationship between the latent variable (which cannot be directly observed) and observed variables within an integrated framework (Huang et al., 2013). We established a SPSS data file incorporating the 712 valid responses and imported it into AMOS (Analysis of MOment Structures)7.0, the popular program in SEM to establish an SEM model and determine whether the hypothetical model fitted the observed data (Arbuckle and Chicago, 2007). The research considered the path relationships between endogenous and exogenous variables. The maximum likelihood method was used to estimate the regression coefficients of the paths in the model. In the SEM literature, discussion of fit has led to a variety of different

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1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

4000 3500 3000

MSW (t/d) waste generation per capita (kg/d)

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Fig. 1. MSW generation in Xiamen city.

recommendations on the precise application of the various fit indicators. The commonly used indicators includes chi-square (c2), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), root mean square error approximation (RMSEA) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). c2 reflects the distance between the sample covariance matrix and the theoretical covariance matrix, based on the hypothesized model; the higher the p-value of c2, the better the overall goodness-of-fit. CFI depends in large part on the average size of the correlations in the data. Good model fits are also reflected by RMSEA values below 0.05, SRMR values below 0.08, CFI values above 0.9and CFI values above 0.9 (Pugesek and Tomer, 2003; Beaumelle et al., 2016). 4. Results and discussions 4.1. Characteristics of respondents In the survey, about half of respondents were female, 77.7% of respondents were aged between 25 and 60 years, and 70.2% had completed more than the 9 years of compulsory education in middle school. The nuclear family with 3e4 persons accounted for 65.3% of respondents, and the percentage of households earning between 2000 and 8000 RMB per month was 62.7%. 4.2. Satisfaction of household WM In the survey, 15.3% of the respondents were very satisfied, 39.5% were satisfied, 34.7% were generally satisfied. Only 10.5% indicated dissatisfaction. However, the satisfaction rate showed a spatial heterogeneity (Fig. 3). As the urbanized area has spread from the west of the island to the east, waste collection and transportation has been improved significantly in newer areas. However, these services have not been modernized in the densely populated old town communities. Respondents showed a higher satisfaction rate in the newly built up area in the east than in the old downtown area, and the satisfaction rate was only 24% in the north of the island, where many economic migrants live in high density, low cost urban villages. These villages contain mixed industrial and residential areas with relatively poor infrastructure, and WM evidently needs to be improved. Spatial analysis showed that the relationship between satisfaction rate and residential prices was significant (p ¼ 0.005, r ¼ 0.041). In the survey, 53.5% of respondents reported that they always

separate recyclable waste from household waste, while 37.9% did so occasionally and 8.6% never separated recyclables. Selling to the informal sector, including waste pickers and independent curbside collection points, was the main method to deal with recyclable waste (66.8% of respondents) rather than throwing it away (33.2%). When asked about their preferred recycling method, 44.9% of respondents hoped that a recycling station could be built in their community in future, while 44.2% hoped that recyclable waste could continue to be sold to informal recyclers. Only 2.6% claimed they were in favor of deposit refund schemes, and 9.3% preferred supermarket recycling sites. Very few of the respondents recycled food waste, with 73.5% of respondents throwing food waste away with other trash, while 10.5% threw it away to the sewer and others used it to feed animals. The survey data revealed that the informal sector played a significant role in recyclable waste management, as in most developing countries. No specific classification, collection or treatment system for food waste has been established in Xiamen, so it is usually disposed of by incineration or landfill. Source separation at the household level is still in its infancy; only a few pilot projects have so far been implemented in China. Information about source separation methods is inadequate so most residents have no idea where to go for separation and recycling. Instead, the small-scale, low-technology, low-paid informal sectors are still active in the collection, processing and trading of recyclable resources in urban China (Fan et al., 2016), but this causes serious secondary pollution of the environment. Most informal recyclers are urban poor or migrants, and approximately 0.56%e0.93% of the urban population is involved in informal waste collection and recycling activities in Chinese cities (Linzner and Salhofer, 2014). About 20,000e34,000 persons make a living by informally collecting and recycling waste in Xiamen city. Although Xiamen has been awarded the titles of National Environmental Protection Model City and National Sanitary City, the waste management system is far from sustainable. Although more than half of the respondents were satisfied with waste management, the results illustrate that more attention should be paid to public participation in waste separation and recycling. 4.3. Household’s willingness to participate in WM Source separation is the first step to implement the 3Rs principle. Unit-charging programs have been found to effective in

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Fig. 2. Distribution of the geographic locations for the typical communities.

Table 1 Factors potentially influencing people’s willingness to participate in WM, questionnaire section 2. Item description

Variables

Scoring

Y1 Y2

To what extent are you willing to participate in source separation and recycling? To what extent are you willing to participate in a unit-charging program?

Separation/recyclingwillingness Unit-charging willingness

X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9

If the separation logo is clear on the trash bin, I will separate my waste Public information campaigns make me pay more attention to the waste issue If I know the waste separation/recycling method, I will do it at home Environmental Laws would oblige me to separate my waste correctly I will do better in waste separation if my family members also separate waste I will do better in waste separation if my residential community has regulations for waste sorting I will do better in waste separation if my neighbors separate their waste I would sell recyclable waste to gain economic benefits I will do better in waste sorting if I get a reward

Trash bin logo Public advertising Separation/recycling method Environmental law Family members’ behaviors Community regulation Neighbor behaviors Value of recyclable waste Reward

To a great extent ¼5 To a considerable extent ¼4 To a moderate extent ¼3 To a slight extent ¼2 To no extent¼1 Five-point Likert Scale SA ¼ Strongly agree¼5 A ¼ Agree¼4 N ¼ Neutral¼3 D ¼ Disagree¼2 SD ¼ Strongly disagree¼1

promoting waste separation and recycling, especially in waste separation and waste reduction (Sakai et al., 2008). In combination with source separation, unit-charging programs can bring about a dramatic reduction in waste. We used respondents’ willingness to participation in waste separation and unit-charging to measure environmental willingness regarding MW (Huang et al., 2006). These two variables can also indicate the direction of future WM policy in the city as we discussed with staff in Environmental Sanitary department. The questionnaire results showed a positive attitude towards source separation. Some 50.2% of respondents were very willing to participate in waste separation programs

proposed by the government, a further 33.3% were willing, 14.0% were indifferent and only 2.5% stated that they were reluctant to do it. These responses indicated that waste separation and recycling would have a high feasibility. However, the acceptance of unit charging was much lower. Some 22.0% stated that they were very willing to pay for WM per unit, 24.8% were willing to pay, 31.7% were indifferent and 21.5% were reluctant to pay for it. 4.4. Key factors influencing public participation Trash bin logo, public advertising and separation/recycling

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Table 2 Respondents’ profile. Variables Gender Male Female Education Primary school Middle school High school Higher education Age <24 24e40 41e50 51e59 >60

Frequency % 49.00% 51.00% 6.60% 23.20% 36.40% 33.80% 8.10% 30.20% 26.30% 21.20% 14.20%

Variables

Frequency %

Family size 1 person 4.60% 2 person 11.80% 3 person 34.60% 4 person 30.80% 5 person 14.70% 6 person 3.50% Income RMB Yuan/month 0e2000 16.20% 2000e4000 31.90% 4000e6000 19.50% 6000e8000 14.20% 8000e10000 11.20% >100000 7.00%

method provides information on why, where and how to recycle. The internal consistency for this scale, as assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.727. Environmental law and community regulation are institutional factors, and Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.701. Family members’ behavior, neighbor behavior, value of recyclable waste and rewards are social motivation factors which may have extrinsic influence on behavior; Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.723. All the variables were transformed into ordinal variables as shown in Table 3. SD values ranged between 0.649 and 1.159. The scores of agreement ranking from lowest to highest were laws, rewards, community regulation, separation/recycling method, public advertising, family member behavior, value of recyclable waste, neighbor behavior and trash bin logo (Table 3). According to the results, compared to separation, unit-charging was the less preferable choice to achieve public participation in the 3Rs. In many countries, waste charging is widely held to be the most viable way to bring about a waste-reducing change in consumer behaviour and aid effective source separation (Sakai et al., 2008; Sauer et al., 2008; Dresne and Ekins, 2010), and is considered to be the future policy in Xiamen city by the Environmental Sanitary department. Among socio-demographic variables, income appears to be an important factor of increased people’s willing to pay for environmental improvement in developed countries. Several papers found a positive link between them (Milovantseva, 2016). Some respondents are not affluent, who still concerned about self-interests and reluctant to pay for the bill in a mediumsize city in China. The idea that it is the government, not the general public who has the responsibility to pay for the WM is widespread. However, this result suggests that there is still need to explore influencing factors to facilitate unit-charging. The effects of the factors influencing people’s willingness to participate in WM can be quantified by establishing a structural equation model, where people’s willingness to participate in WM knowledge, institution and social motivation are latent variable types, and other eleven issues are observed variable types to represent the constructs. The hypothesized path model yielded a good fit to data, as evidenced by a non-significant x2 value (x2 ¼ 74.48, P ¼ 0.288 > 0.05), a normed fit index (NFI) ¼ 0.985 > 0.9, a comparative fit index (CFI) ¼ 0.936 > 0.9, and a root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ¼ 0.023 < 0.05. The final model and standardized effects are depicted in Fig. 4. Squares represent observed variables and ellipses represent unobserved variables measured by observed variables; e1-e10 and z1z4 are the residual factors which were not included in the model. The line width was proportional to the effects. Standardized path coefficients are shown on edges and represent partial regression coefficients. All the factors have positive effects on environmental willingness. The path analysis illustrates that knowledge has the

strongest positive effect on environmental willingness, followed by social motivation and institutions. In terms of the absolute values of standard path coefficients, the order of effects was separation/ recycling method, trash bin logo, public advertising, community regulation, family members’ behaviors, neighbor behavior, rewards, economic incentives and environmental law. Citizens who are better informed have a greater propensity to participate in source separation and payment than those who are not as well informed. Informing was one rung in the influential citizen participation ladder proposed by Arnstein (1969) in TPB. The results supported the idea that the level of information about waste infrastructure was a significant factor in determining the choice behavior (Guidotti and Abercrombie, 2008). Separation/recycling method plays an important role in knowledge and is linked to trash bin logo, as both provide clear information to citizens. Considering future waste management development, waste separation/recycling method will be more complicated if citizens have to throw different waste compositions at different times, or in different sites or trash bins. As more and more people increase awareness about the importance of the environment and want to participate in environment protection, the perceived difficulties with separating and recycling of various materials may pose a formidable barrier to participation. For example, composting is a traditional way to dispose of food waste in Chinese agrarian society, but the method is rarely used in urbanized areas at present. Knowledge is a major barrier that results in poor MSW separation participation, so residents need an appropriate and easy method if they are to become involved in waste separation and recycling. But knowledge was not statistically confirmed because citizens may believe that their individual contribution is too insignificant when compared with the problem magnitude by Valle et al. (2004). Community regulation had a larger influence on behavior than laws. Family members and neighbors can provide social motivation if respondents feel that they are behaving in harmony with social norms. The questionnaire also showed that respondents preferred honorary titles (60.3%) to monetary rewards (22.9%) from the municipality for their environmentally friendly behaviors. Respondents were not sensitive to the price of recyclable waste, which is quite low in the informal recycling sector. The economic benefits from selling recyclable waste have the least effect on waste recycling. The relationship between economic incentive and willing to pay remains controversial. Our findings echo previous studies which found that non-recyclers were more concerned with financial incentives and rewards for recycling, but which are often ignored by recyclers (Joanne, 1990). Economic incentives were even negatively correlated with environmentally friendly behaviors (Zhang et al., 2012). 4.5. Waste policy hierarchy The most favorable option to improve citizen participation is knowledge, followed by social motivation, with the least favorable option being institutions. The results indicate policy priorities which are quite different from the current situation in china. Laws and regulations are invariably introduced first, followed on some occasions by attempts to motivate compliance in Chinese cities. Waste separation has been introduced by the Waste Management Ordinance in Xiamen city and Fujian Province since 2004, and every household has to pay 60 RMB every half year since 2006 as a waste charging fee according to this Ordinance. However, less than 25 percent of citizens actually paid these fees. Every year, Xiamen city chooses 10e20 communities as waste separation demonstration communities, and after a campaign-style beginning, all the waste is mixed together. The campaign-style law enforcement is merely a provisionary instrument which lacks effective implementation and

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Fig. 3. The spatial distribution of satisfaction rate. Red circles present the satisfaction rate in the sampling community; the larger the circle area, the higher the satisfaction rate. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Table 3 Scores of people’s willingness to participate in WM and their influencing factors. Variables Willingness to participate in WM Knowledge

Institution Social motivation

Separation willingness Unit-charging willingness Trash bin logo Public advertising Separation/recycling method Environmental laws Community regulation Neighbor behavior Value of recyclable waste Reward Family members’ behavior

Mean

SD

4.312 3.444 4.591 4.431 4.406 4.194 4.571 4.451 4.385 4.194 4.32

0.811 1.159 0.649 0.744 0.754 0.937 0.704 0.856 0.824 0.872 0.81

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supervision. The priorities for future urban WM should differ from the current legislative-centered WM model. A waste hierarchy has been defined in European countries with prevention as a priority, then the 3Rs, and disposal at the bottom of the inverted pyramid (Papargyropoulou et al., 2014). The SEM model indicates a waste policy hierarchy in Chinese cities in response to the results (Fig. 5). The more relevant the factors are in citizens’ daily life, the larger the effect the factors have. A clear separation/recycling method has more influence on participation willingness than environmental law. Family members’ behavior is more likely to influence recycling than neighbor behavior, both of which are more effective than social rewards. Community regulation has more constraints on waste recycling than laws with weak sanctions. Waste policymaking should focus on the subtle small start, with priority given to residential daily life, which has a larger effect to participation willingness. This finding also suggested that strategies which emphasized individuals’ intrinsic and moral motivations will be important in promoting household environmental willingness. As public advertising is an effective way to deliver knowledge to residents, and having more knowledge provides the biggest incentive to participate in recycling, public advertising should be used to encourage participation in WM. But Diekmann proposed that while environmental concern improves environmental behavior, this effect diminishes with increasing behavioral costs, including but not limited to economic cost (Diekmann and Preisendrfer, 1998, 2003). Environmental concern influences environmental behavior primarily in situations and under conditions where individual actors experience low costs and little inconvenience. Traditional environmental instruction and education primary focused on increasing environmental concern, for example by explaining the severity of environmental problems and the importance of environmental protection, rather than providing guidelines to improve environmental behaviors. Separation and unit-charging schemes should be designed to maximize convenience to householders. Education was highlighted to bridge the gap between “having the right attitude and actualizing that in behavior” (Neo, 2010; Massawe et al., 2014). Decision makers should institutionalize environmental education to provide

positive reinforcement to good environmental behaviors. Although respondents have a high level of willingness to participate in separation and unit-charging in Xiamen city, many did not know how or where to get involved in the program. It is essential to make environmental education a component of school curricula, to ensure that children understand how to separate waste correctly and feel a sense of moral obligation. Institutions can lay a foundation for a sustainable WM (Lu et al., 2006). However, although the 3Rs principle was introduced in Xiamen’s Waste Management Ordinance in 2004, MSW has doubled over the last decade. Our results indicate that institutions will not be as effective as is often presumed, and there is still a great deal of uncertainty associated with policy implementation. The cost of illegal dumping and inappropriate separation is essentially zero because there are still no effective countermeasures. Although the city government has enforced aggressive WM policies and provided significant investment in landfill and incineration, there is a lack of communication strategies to provide information on separation/recycling methods and the design of waste separation facilities. As our survey results indicate, separation/ recycling method will likely be the most effective way to increase public participation. Recycling sites with portable electronic devices based on Environmental internet of things (EIoT) would provide a convenient way in separation/recycling method. As respondent s indicated that they prefer selling to itinerant waste pickers (44.1%) and using recycling sites in their community (42.8%), a community recycling site might recruit informal workers to do source separation and unit-charging, transforming the informal to the formal sector. Portable electronic devices could enhance the ability of residents and waste pickers to gather and share precise location, prices, supply and demand information related to recyclable waste in the community recycling sites and exchange or trade recyclable waste, making separation and recycling more proficient and efficient. Due to the major role of the informal sector in recycling, the environmental sanitary department should promote participation of informal workers by using the EIoT to improve knowledge dissemination. EIoT could be used in the community sites to distribute detailed information about

Fig. 4. SEM model.

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recycling demands and requirements in the community (Zhou et al., 2013). Informal waste workers with proper training can provide more professional and flexible services to residents, and the recycling center can collect and deliver efficient recycling information to community residents. 5. Conclusions WM is a cyclical process in a complex social-ecological system which requires continued participation of multiple stakeholders, especially local communities and residents. WM in Xiamen has yielded some good results and has achieved a high level of citizen satisfaction. However, although Xiamen is a WM pilot city and has made significant investment in waste management facilities, waste recycling depends almost entirely on the informal sector. There is a great need to increase public participation in WM, and the SEM model confirms the hypothesis that several factors influence people’s willingness to participate in WM. The results further indicated that improved public participation in Xiamen may be achieved by providing better information, improving waste collection and disposal facilities, public advertising and community regulations. Convenient separation/recycling methods and easy access to waste facilities are most effective in improving public participation in waste management. Our results also suggest that observing environmentally friendly behaviors in family and neighbors motivates citizens to participate in waste separation and unit-charging. Rewards, the value of recyclable waste (which is often too low to provide sufficient incentive) and environmental laws (which may be irrelevant to citizens’ daily lives, especially if not enforced) are not considered as important influencing factors. The paper proposes a hierarchy of motivating factors, of which the most important is knowledge, followed by social example and institutional influences. Our results indicated that the priorities for future urban WM should differ from the current legislative-centered WM model. A survey-based SEM referenced the waste management theory and models (TPB, appropriate facilities and knowledge) and hypothesized appropriate facilities, time and space contributed towards positive results on people’s willingness to participate in WM. Moreover, it considered the actual situation of Chinese cities (with recyclable waste prices determined by the informal sector, the existence of community regulations and social norms among neighbors and families in a traditional society), as well as future WM

Fig 5. Waste policy hierarchy in China.

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scenarios (waste separation and unit-charging). SEM was more powerful in addressing causal relationships and ranking influencing factors in terms of their importance compared with traditional methods used in previous studies. External factors, such as institutions, have been taken seriously by the official department, but appear to be less effective than was presumed. UN reported that the fastest-growing agglomerations were medium-sized cities located in Asia, especially in China (UN, 2014). These findings indicate a practical waste policy hierarchy in other medium-sized cities with rapid develop and waste generation. There is a wide interest across the city in separation and payment but the rollout of such schemes will only be successful if the local municipality provides adequate knowledge and motivation. The results help decision makers determine effective strategies to boost public participation in WM, and can be used as a guideline for future environmental education curricula. The method developed in this study can be readily applied to other cities, and serves as a useful tool to understand and profile residential environmental performance, thereby facilitating the development of tailored and targeted policies for sustainable WM. Acknowledgments The research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 41301621, Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, Grant No. 2015J01177, Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Grant No. IUEQN201302. References Ajzen, I., 1991. The theory of planned behavior. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 50.2, 179e211. Arbuckle, J.L.S.P.S.S., Chicago, I.L., 2007. USA, Amos 16.0 User’s Guide. Arnstein, S.R., 1969. A ladder of citizen participation. J. Am. Inst. Plan. 35, 216e224. Beaumelle, L., Vile, D., Lamy, I., et al., 2016. A structural equation model of soil metal bioavailability to earthworms: confronting causal theory and observations using a laboratory exposure to field-contaminated soils. Sci. Total Environ. 569e597, 961e972. Cave, J., 2014. Who owns urban waste? Appropriation conflicts in emerging countries. Waste Manag. Res. 32 (9), 813e821. Cheng, H., Hu, Y., 2010. Municipal solid waste (MSW) as a renewable source of energy: current and future practices in China. Bioresour. Technol. 101, 3816e3824. Cheng, H., Zhang, Y., Meng, A., Li, Q., 2007. Municipal solid waste fueled power generation in China: a case study of waste-to-energy in Changchun city. Environ. Sci. Technol. 41, 7509e7515. Cheung, S.F., Chan, D., Wong, Z., 1999. Reexamining the theory of planned behavior in understanding wastepaper recycling. Environ. Behav. 31.5, 587e612. Cox, J., Giorgi, S., Sharp, V., Strange, K., Wilson, D.C., Blakey, N., 2010. Household waste prevention??a review of evidence. Waste Manag. Res. 28 (3), 193e219. Diaz, R., Otoma, S., 2012. Constrained recycling: a framework to reduce landfilling in developing countries. Waste Manag. Res. 31 (1), 23e29. Diekmann, A., Preisendrfer, P., 1998. Environmental behavior discrepancies between aspirations and reality. Ration. Soc. 10 (1), 79e102. Diekmann, A., Preisendrfer, P., 2003. Green and greenback the behavioral effects of environmental attitudes in low-cost and high-cost situations. Ration. Soc. 15 (4), 441e472. Dijkema, G.P.J., Reuter, M.A., Verhoef, E.V., 2000. A new paradigm for waste management. Waste Manag. 20 (8), 633e638. Dresner, S., Ekins, P., 2010. Charging for domestic waste in England: combining environmental and equity considerations. Resour. Conserv. Recy 54, 1100e1108. Fan, F., Qu, L.L., Wen, Z.G., Xue, Y.Y., Zhang, H.N., 2016. How to integrate the informal recycling system into municipal solid waste management in developing countries: based on a China’s case in Suzhou urban area. Resour. Conserv. Recy 110, 74e86. Garnett, K., Cooper, T., 2014. Effective dialogue: enhanced public engagement as a legitimising tool for municipal waste management decision-making. Waste Manag. 34 (12), 2709e2726. Gellynck, X., Jacobsen, R., Verhelst, P., 2011. Identifying the key factors in increasing recycling and reducing residual household waste: a case study of the Flemish region of Belgium. J. Environ. Manag. 92 (10), 2683e2690. Giaccaria, S., Frontuto, V., 2010. Perceived health status and environmental quality in the assessment of external cost of waste disposal facilities. An empirical investigation. Waste Manag. Res. 30, 864e870.

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