Effects of Unit-Based Garbage Pricing: A Differences-in-Differences Approach
By Maarten A. Allers, C. Hoeben. 2010
116 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Using a unique 10-year dataset of all 458 Dutch municipalities, we apply a differences-in-differences approach to estimate the effect of unit-based pricing on household waste quantities and recycling. Community-level studies of unit-based pricing typically do not include fixed effects at the local level. We find that failure to do so may substantially inflate the estimated price effect. We also find that unit-based pricing may be endogenous, and use instrumental variables to account for this. Our analysis shows that user fees depend on user fees in neighboring jurisdictions (policy interaction). Our estimate of the garbage reduction per $1 user fee is lower than any previous estimate bar one. The price effect depends on the pricing system: weight-based systems reduce garbage quantities more than volume-based systems. User fees increase recycling, especially of paper, but not nearly as much as they reduce garbage quantities. We find no evidence for waste tourism or illegal dumping.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Transportation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f48c0bc0b1a806147460ccd7ed38abb23f8f30ea
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In Economics and Econometrics
- S. Mancinelli
- Grazia Cecere
- Elbert Dijkgraaf
- Raymond Gradus
- Paul H. L. Nillesen
- R. V. Koppen
- Michal Struk
- M. Mazzanti
In Transportation
Citations in the corpus
- A Cost-effectiveness Analysis for Incineration or Recycling of Dutch Household Plastic Waste (2017, background): “It is well-known that unit-based pricing systems are effective in stimulating recyclable waste, such as plastics (see Allers and Hoeben, 2010). Second, nonmonetary initiatives, such as the provision of frequent curbside recycling services and reducing the collection frequency of residual waste could”
- Waste Prevention and Social Preferences: The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations (2014, background): “…have recently concentrated on waste generation and disposal drivers, focusing on the analysis of regional frameworks (Hage and Soderholm, 2008; De Jaeger and Eyckmans, 2008, Dijkgraaf and Gradus, 2009, 2004; Allers and Hoeben, 2010), which sometimes provide hints of a more microeconomic flavour.”
- Distance and incentives matter: The separation of recyclable municipal waste (2017, background): “Allers and Hoeben (2010) or Bucciol et al. (2015) identified the positive impacts of incentive programs as well, with the latter calculating the combined effect of kerbside collection and incentive on the separation rate to be almost 17%, although additional recyclables were included in the study.”