Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 140, October 2017, Pages 58-65
Ecological Economics

Inconvenience cost of waste disposal behavior in South Korea

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.04.031Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Estimates inconvenience costs associated with waste sorting behavior.

  • Adopts a latent class logit model to calculate inconvenience costs

  • Inconvenience cost of hygiene of disposal spot is higher than that for sorting.

  • Older people report lower inconvenience costs than do younger ones.

  • Some groups prefer manual sorting to automated sorting service for food waste.

Abstract

Pro-environmental activities, such as waste sorting, are considered inconveniencing; the higher the inconvenience, the more difficult it becomes to encourage active public participation. This study defines waste sorting behavior considering certain attributes and estimates the inconvenience costs associated with each attribute. The definition also considers how and when waste is disposed of as well as the hygiene of a disposal spot. We apply a conjoint analysis for data collection and latent class logit model to calculate the inconvenience costs. The model incorporates consumers' heterogeneity as a finite number of homogenous groups. The results show that the inconvenience cost for the hygiene of the disposal spot is generally higher than that of sorting itself; this tendency is strongest among young women. Moreover, older people report lower inconvenience costs than do younger ones. Further, some groups prefer manual sorting to an automated sorting service for food waste. Our findings offer policy implications considering such inconvenience costs.

Introduction

Environmental problems, such as air pollution and growing waste burdens, have become increasingly serious issues in the 21st-century global society, and can be attributed to the growing global population and lack of environmental regulations in developing countries. Global solid waste generation in 2010 was 3.5 million tonnes per day, and this amount is expected to triple by 2100 (World Bank, 2013). Therefore, governments, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and academic societies worldwide are shifting focus to “sustainable development,” which refers to achieving economic development, while preserving the environment (Giddings et al., 2002, Griggs et al., 2013, Hopwood et al., 2005, Lele, 1991, Pearce and Warford, 1993, Pearce et al., 2013, Redclift, 2005, Smit and Pilifosova, 2003). Businesses and governments play a key role in the successful achievement of sustainable development by, for example, producing environmentally friendly products (Welford, 2013) and designing pro-environment regulations and policies; nevertheless, this does not discount the importance of consumers' pro-environmental behavior (Korea Environment Institute [KEI], 2015a).

However, pro-environmental behavior is not widely practiced because it is generally considered an inconvenience. Thus, to promote this behavior among consumers, we need to lower the resultant inconvenience costs (Turaga et al., 2010), which is the monetary representation of the inconvenience experienced by a consumer when performing a given action. Inconvenience costs can be reduced by implementing the appropriate policies and systems. To design such policies or systems, it is important to understand the inconvenience costs associated with each pro-environmental behavior attribute. This study aims to investigate the inconvenience costs incurred by waste sorting in South Korea. Although South Korea is the most successful country in terms of recycling, achieving the highest (around 60%) global recycling ratio for municipal waste generated in 2014 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016), there are still problems and room for improvement.

However, the lack of quantitative data on the extent of inconvenience consumers experienced for each attribute of waste sorting behavior hinders the effective designing of new policies that can promote people's participation and guide them in appropriately sorting waste. This study attempts to assign a monetary value to the inconvenience generated from waste sorting behavior and contribute to a more specific and reasonable policy design, such as related regulations and budget allocations. To do so, we divide waste sorting behavior into six attributes. In this study, waste sorting behavior is the whole procedure of sorting, transporting, and disposing of waste. Each step consists of sorting waste into three broad categories—general waste, food waste, and recyclables—as well as further segregating recyclables into eight categories (sort), transporting them to a designated disposal spot (transport), and appropriately disposing of them at a disposal spot (dispose). The six attributes selected account for various attributes other than sorting, such as associated costs, disposal method and time, and hygiene of the disposal spot. We adopt a latent class model (LCM) that considers respondents' heterogeneity and offer implications corresponding to inconvenience costs by group.

For some countries, each household makes its own contract with one of the existing waste disposal companies. However, in South Korea, individual households do not have a choice in their waste disposal plan, and they have to abide by the existing rules. If the discharger violates these rules, he/she incurs a fine of $100–$300 (Korea Ministry of Environment [KME], 2013). Fig. 1 illustrates Korea's municipal solid waste disposal system. First, the discharger must sort waste into three categories: general waste, food waste, and recyclables. Then, general and food waste1 must be placed in volume-rate garbage disposal bags, and recyclables are further segregated into eight categories: paper, clothing, plastic, cans, glass, scrap metal, vinyl, and styrofoam. These wastes should then be disposed of at their designated disposal spots.

Disposal sites are usually designated at the roadside near the building in which the household resides and, after each household places their waste in these spots after sunset on disposal day, professional companies designated by the local government collect it late at night. Since disposal spots are designated near residential areas, problems relating to the hygiene of the spot can be crucial. According to our survey, 20% of our respondents stated that the unclean disposal spot is the most inconvenient factor in waste disposal behavior. Finally, the disposal date and time differ slightly, depending on the local government, but normally, the household can dispose of its waste on two or three designated days per week. Since each household does not individually make a contract with the waste disposal company, its expenditure for waste disposal occurs when buying volume-based waste disposal bags. The average expenditure of each household was, according to our survey, 10,947 KRW (9.26 USD2) in 2015.

The sophisticated and strict discharging system has dramatically changed South Korea's waste treatment structure since the 1990s. In fact, the nation recently reported the highest (around 60%) global recycling ratio for municipal waste generated (OECD, 2016). However, despite its success, the system presents certain problems; for example, recyclables are still disposed of as general waste. According to the Fourth National Waste Statistical Survey (KME, 2013), the amount of waste generated per person on a daily basis during 2011–2012 was 940 g, which is about 8.2% higher than that of the previous survey results (2006–2007). Notably, general waste disposed of in volume-based garbage bags increased by 47.7%, whereas food waste and recyclables collected decreased by 6.5% and 2.1%, respectively. According to a component analysis for collected general waste, over 70% was recyclables, including paper (41%), plastic (24.3%), metal (2.6%), and glass (2.5%). This means that a majority of recyclables are being disposed of as general waste. Although some local governments re-sort such general waste, this additional procedure incurs high costs.

Nevertheless, according to the 2015 National Environmental Consciousness Survey conducted by the KEI (2015b), 22.5% of total respondents considered the increasing waste levels as the most serious environmental problem. Moreover, when asked about the main responsible agents for environmental pollution among general consumers, businesses, and governments, 41.7% answered that general consumers are the most responsible agents. Thus, Korean consumers consider waste a serious problem and believe that necessary measures should be taken by themselves.

Section snippets

Literature Review

As the waste issue raises a serious global problem, many studies concerning waste management are being actively conducted from various viewpoints. First, some studies have analyzed the social and economic impact of recycling policies. León et al. (2016) conducted a study on the selection of the waste landfill site and its economic impact; the study claims that, rather than policy selecting the landfill site far away from the densely populated area, policy promoting each household's recycling

Data

Data were collected by Gallup Korea and funded by the KEI. Prior to the main survey, a pilot test was conducted with 205 participants to test the validity of the selected attributes and their levels. The main survey included 1071 respondents who participated in face-to-face interviews conducted by trained interviewers using structured questionnaires, and the survey was conducted from August to September 2015. These respondents were selected on the basis of their region (17 regions), gender, and

Results and Discussion

Using the data and model presented in Section 3, in this section, we estimate the inconvenience cost of waste sorting for each attribute. Given that respondent i is allocated to class q, we assume that the utility a respondent gains from alternative j is as follows:Uijq=drecycleβi1q+dfoodwasteβi2q+ddispose_autoβi3q+ddispose_everydayβi4q+dcleanβi5q+dcostβi6q+εijq

Next, before conducting the LCM analysis, we fix the number of classes, Q. We use the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and

Conclusions and Policy Implications

In this study, we estimated the inconvenience cost of waste sorting, a pro-environment activity. Using an LCM, we divided the respondents into four homogeneous groups with differing utility structures. The key findings are as follows.

First, younger consumers tend to incur high inconvenience costs, whereas older consumers tend to incur low inconvenience costs for waste sorting. Second, individuals tend to report a higher inconvenience cost for the hygiene of a disposal spot than for the sorting

Acknowledgements

This study is partially based on “Inconvenience Cost of Pro-environmental Activity and its Policy Implications (RE2015-01)” conducted by the Korea Environment Institute (KEI), and was funded by the Korea Ministry of Environment as Climate Change Correspondence R&D Program (2014001300001).

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