FACTORS INFLUENCING WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY FROM ITALY

Municipal waste management is a challenge for the governments in developed countries. The European Union has enacted many directives aimed to increasing the separate waste collection level in order to reach a sustainable development. Acting within the boundaries of the Waste Framework Directive (WD 2008/98/EC), the Member States adopted specific national strategies aimed to meet the thresholds set by EU. In this paper, we analyse the driving force of the separate waste collection behaviours in Italy. This country is characterised by wide socio-economic disparities that make it a noteworthy case study. While many studies analysed separately the main driving factors (e.g., morphological, socio-economic, individual attitudes) of waste collecting behaviours, as element of novelty of this work, we analyse the joint action of these factors on sorting habits. By using a spatial analysis on municipal data collected from official records, we test whether virtuous waste management performances are driven by external pressure (e.g., socio-economic context, social influences) or by proenvironmental attitudes. Our results suggest, on the one hand, the fundamental role of the institutional quality, education, and the well-being of the regions, and, on the other hand, the central role of the awareness, the knowledge and the commitment towards the environmental issues.