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Exploring residents’ attitudes and willingness to pay for solid waste management in Macau

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Abstract

Increasing public attention has been brought to bear on the solid waste management in Macau, due to the continually increasing generation of amount and the limited space. In this study, we discussed residents’ attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for solid waste management through a questionnaire survey. The results showed that Macau residents owned a relatively high environmental awareness. In regard to Macau environmental quality, most respondents (92.4 %) expressed their satisfactions on the current situation. About 50.2 % respondents thought that the solid waste pollution in Macau should be paid more attention than the other three environmental pollution ways (air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution). The survey data revealed the positive attitudes toward source separation in Macau. About 95.7 % respondents were willing to sort the solid waste at home, if the government required them to do it. In addition, for the question on how to improve the solid waste issues in Macau, “Enhancing residents’ environmental awareness” was considered as the most effective method, accounting for about 38.5 % respondents. In our study, most respondents (85.4 %) also provided positive answers to the questions about WTP. Using the logistic regression method, these survey results support the hypothesis that the probability of the respondents’ saying “yes” to the WTP question increases with education level. The monthly mean WTP was 38.5 MOP per household, and the annual WTP was approximately 79.7 million MOP for all of Macau. The results of our study can help managers develop more effective environmental management policies for solid waste disposal.

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Acknowledgments

The work was financially supported by the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Science and Technology Cooperation Program of China (2014DFM90170) and a special fund of the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control (11Z02ESPCT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macau Environmental Research Institute, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China

    Qingbin Song & Zhishi Wang

  2. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Qingbin Song & Jinhui Li

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  1. Qingbin Song
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  2. Zhishi Wang
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  3. Jinhui Li
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Correspondence to Jinhui Li.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Song, Q., Wang, Z. & Li, J. Exploring residents’ attitudes and willingness to pay for solid waste management in Macau. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 16456–16462 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-6590-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-6590-8

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