TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards sustainable consumption
T2 - A socio-economic analysis of household waste recycling outcomes in Hong Kong
AU - Lo, Alex Y.
AU - Liu, Shuwen
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the editors and the four anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Environmental Management for their useful comments and suggestions. The generosity of the Environmental Protection Department for making the useful data openly available is highly appreciated. The first author received funding support for this study from the Environment and Conservation Fund (Project Reference Number: TF02/2015 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/5/15
Y1 - 2018/5/15
N2 - Many high-density cities struggle to find space for disposing municipal solid waste. Hong Kong is one of these cities, seeking to scale up waste recovery efforts as an alternative to disposal. However, territory-wide recovery initiatives do not account for socio-economic variations across place, leading to mixed outcomes among diverse communities. This study aims to investigate socio-economic effects on recycling behavior in a sample of subsidized rental housing estates. It constitutes an improvement from previous studies by using the entire estate as a unit of analysis and analyzing actual recycling outcomes, which have received limited attention from researchers. The analysis focused on the volume of recyclables collected from 158 public housing estates in Hong Kong, with an average population of 12,285. Results suggest that recycling outcomes vary with a limited set of socio-economic factors. Housing estates managed by a private property management company and populated by better off households collected more recyclables from their residents. Measures of absolute and relative recycling intensity achieved similar results. The findings will be useful for identifying residential communities requiring additional support for promoting waste separation and recycling. Differentiated policies for economically disadvantaged communities are warranted.
AB - Many high-density cities struggle to find space for disposing municipal solid waste. Hong Kong is one of these cities, seeking to scale up waste recovery efforts as an alternative to disposal. However, territory-wide recovery initiatives do not account for socio-economic variations across place, leading to mixed outcomes among diverse communities. This study aims to investigate socio-economic effects on recycling behavior in a sample of subsidized rental housing estates. It constitutes an improvement from previous studies by using the entire estate as a unit of analysis and analyzing actual recycling outcomes, which have received limited attention from researchers. The analysis focused on the volume of recyclables collected from 158 public housing estates in Hong Kong, with an average population of 12,285. Results suggest that recycling outcomes vary with a limited set of socio-economic factors. Housing estates managed by a private property management company and populated by better off households collected more recyclables from their residents. Measures of absolute and relative recycling intensity achieved similar results. The findings will be useful for identifying residential communities requiring additional support for promoting waste separation and recycling. Differentiated policies for economically disadvantaged communities are warranted.
KW - Environmental behavior
KW - Household income
KW - Household waste
KW - Waste recycling
KW - Waste separation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043521200&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.029
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.029
M3 - Article
C2 - 29547846
AN - SCOPUS:85043521200
SN - 0301-4797
VL - 214
SP - 416
EP - 425
JO - Journal of Environmental Management
JF - Journal of Environmental Management
ER -
