The selective collection of municipal solid waste and other factors determining cost efficiency. An analysis of service provision by spanish municipalities
Identificadores
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/100519Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteAuteur
Campos Alba, Cristina María; Garrido Rodríguez, Juan Carlos; Plata Díaz, Ana María; Pérez López, GemmaMateria
Cost efficiency Types of waste Waste management service Environment
Date
2021-08Résumé
In recent years, concerns about the increasing generation of municipal solid waste, together with related health
and environmental issues and regulatory changes, have motivated significant alterations in the provision of
waste management services, such as the introduction of selective collection (by type of waste). However, these
changes may impact on service costs and/or efficiency. The present study was undertaken to analyse the efficiency
of the waste management service in Spain, using data from 283 municipalities for the period 2005–2015.
The analysis consists of two phases: first, the application of panel data order-m frontiers, that allows to obtain a
homogeneous estimation of efficiency based on the input–output relationship at the production process (Surroca
et al., 2016), and second, the use of bootstrapped truncated regression, considering different municipal sizes. The
results obtained show that cost efficiency is increased with selective collection and by certain political and socioeconomic
factors of the local governments, concretely with the government by a progressive party, coalition
governments, a greater financial independence, a greater tourist and industrial activity and a greater proportion
of women and of foreign-born residents in the municipality. We also show that municipal direct provision is the
least efficient management form for this service. The main contribution made by this study is to examine the
influence of different elements of service output (i.e., selection by type of waste vs. non-selection) on cost
efficiency.