| Currently,the municipal solid waste(MSW)disposal facilities in most Chinese cities are in overload operation.Logically,the enormous pressure may stems from the continuous growth of MSW generation and the failure of reduction policies in the management process to control MSW generation within the capacity of disposal facilities.If this logical conjecture is validated,it is imperative for cities to increase the supply of MSW disposal facilities,however,the supply of disposal facilities has a distinctive "not in my back yard(NIMBY)" feature in the geospatial distribution of total social costs and benefits,where the negative external costs are borne by the local residents,but the benefits are obtained by the wider general public which located farther.This uneven spatial distribution of costs and benefits makes it necessary to consider the production behavior on the supply side and the preference information on the demand side when choosing the optimal disposal method.Under the dual pressure of the increasing burden of MSW disposal and the "NIMBY" sentiment of the public,this research attempts to adopt a new research perspective,expand relevant theoretical models,as well as compensate for the neglect of spatial factors in the existing relevant literature by fully considering spatial correlation and spatial heterogeneity in the empirical analysis process.It provides potential quantitative reference and corresponding policy enlightenment for local governments in the decision-making of optimizing the supply of MSW disposal facilities,resolving the pressure of MSW disposal and improving the social welfare.Firstly,this article extends and extrapolates the existing theoretical model of the dynamic coupling relationship between MSW generation and economic growth,the main driver of its increase,within the framework of neoclassical economic growth theory.Based on the waste Kuznets curve hypothesis,a macro-contextual empirical examination of the current status of the coupling between the MSW generation and economic growth in China is constructed by a spatial Dubin model.And the results show that there is a relative decoupling between MSW generation and economic growth,and the peak of MSW generation will be postponed after considering the spatial factor compared with the traditional model.MSW disposal facilities in overload operation state will persist for a long time.Secondly,by comparing existing policy evaluation theories,a spatial-two-stage least squares(S2SLS)framework is proposed for evaluating program that alleviate the pressure of disposal by involving the spatial spillover effects among cities as well as correcting the endogenous local policy.The results show that the absolute reduction has not been realized.It is not guaranteed that MSW generation will decrease to the pressure load required by the disposal facilities.It is an inevitable choice for local governments to increase the supply of MSW disposal facilities.The article then explains the theoretical mechanism by which cities "produce"differentiated disposal facilities within the framework of production theory in the local public good supply.A semiparametric geographically weighted poisson regression(SGWPR)model is adopted to analyze the factors influencing the supply of disposal facilities and their geospatial distribution from the supply side,taking into account the spatial heterogeneity of production behavior in each city.The estimation shows that,firstly,the increase in population will lead to a significant increase in the supply of all MSW disposal facilities,while economic growth will only lead to an increase in the supply of incinerator plants.Furthermore,the impact of urban population on the supply of landfills and all the disposal facilities has significant spatial heterogeneity.The northeast is more likely than the southwest to provide MSW disposal facilities other than incinerator plants to cope with the growing urban population.Secondly,the supply of MSW disposal facilities presents a trend from landfills to incinerators,and there is significant spatial heterogeneity in this process of transformation.Specifically,the transformation in the northeast is slower.Thirdly,cities with higher urbanization rate and population density may have higher "NIMBY" sentiment,which makes it more difficult to increase the supply of disposal facilities.Among them,"NIMBY"sentiment is more serious in southern regions than in northern.And fourth,the more dependent the cities are on land finance,the less willing they are to build landfills that take up more lands,especially in the north of China.As a public good,there is no perceptible market or price signal for disposal facilities,and information from the demand side is not directly observable,the welfare economic theory is used to construct basic concepts and choose social welfare measurement methods,as well as the random utility theory is adopted to model the respondents' choice behavior.The social welfare impacts of disposal facilities on the public are assessed through demand side study.In the discrete choice experiments(DCEs),the Bayesian optimal experimental design is adopted to construct the choice sets for the questionnaire.It is estimated that,the traditional landfill disposal is set as the base level,the public's willingness to pay(WTP)for mixed disposal is 176.02 Yuan per person per year,while the WTP for incineration is-249.4 Yuan per person per year.Compared with the traditional landfill,pure incineration disposal has resulted in a net welfare loss,however,keep landfill sites while increasing incineration plants will increase the social welfare.Furthermore,the average WTP for environmental pollution is the highest among all attribute levels,and environmental pollution accounts for the highest proportion in the public's preference of the supply of disposal facilities.The preference is,in descending order,environmental pollution,the distance between facilities and residential sites,and disposal methods.In addition,there is significant spatial heterogeneity in the public preference for disposal facilities.Compared with rural residents,the absolute WTP of urban residents is higher at all attribute levels.Specifically,residents' preference for the distance between disposal facilities and the residential site has a distance decay effect,and the distance decay extremum of urban residents is much higher than that of rural residents.Finally,the economic value of social welfare stem from disposal facilities is calculated based on WTP.The net social loss of the cities relying only on landfill is 9.06 billion Yuan,the net social loss of the cities relying just on incineration is 56.787 billion,and 84.554 billion for the cities relying only on mixed disposal.At the same time,the total social net benefit of all cities is 18.76 billion,indicating that the current supply of MSW disposal facilities has passed the test of the Kaldor-Hicks Criterion and increased social welfare.Spatial heterogeneity exists in the spatial distribution of social net benefit.Some cities in the eastern region only rely on incineration,and their net welfare loss is the largest.The central and western regions and the northeast mainly rely on landfill,and MSW disposal also causes net welfare loss.The article concludes that there is a large mismatch and information asymmetry between the supply and demand sides by matching the findings of both sides.With regard to the choice of different disposal methods,countermeasures are proposed to relieve the pressure on MSW disposal. |
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