What Drives Households’ Payment for Waste Disposal and Recycling Behaviours? Empirical Evidence from South Africa’s General Household Survey

Abstract

Safeguarding the environment and its citizens’ health remains one of the key policy priorities of the governments of many developing and emerging countries. Using the 2017 General Household Survey (GHS) dataset, this study examines the driving factors affecting households’ recycling behaviour and payment for waste disposal in South Africa. The methods of data analysis were based on descriptive statistics and a Bivariate Probit regression model. The descriptive statistics results indicate that there are 56.29% male-headed and 43.71% female headed households, with an average age of 49 years. In addition, the study shows that 89.97% of household heads had formal education with a mean monthly income of 11,099.07 ZAR/650.504 USD. The study also revealed that 22% of the households sampled had access to social grants. The results from the Bivariate Probit regression model show that household’s income, access to social grants, formal educational attainment and the age of the household were significant (p < 0.01) driving factors affecting households’ recycling behaviour and payment for waste disposal. The study concludes that the households’ socio-economic factors affect their recycling behaviour and willingness to pay for waste management in South Africa. Actions targeted at poverty alleviation and environmental sensitization programmes are key for facilitating environmental conservation behaviours of households in South Africa in order to achieve the environmental sustainability Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of the United Nations.

Analysis of the Living Conditions at eZakheleni Informal Settlement of Durban: Implications for Community Revitalization in South Africa

“…Most (54.90%) of the respondents indicated that they removed wastes through self-efforts. This supports the assertion that rapid population growth is uncontrollably causing social and environmental strains in the developing nations of the world, and the magnitude of this challenge is reflected by the increasing amount of solid and liquid waste generated and deposited [39]. Consequently, common features of developing nations such as South Africa are massive areas with stinking heaps of uncollected waste disposed carelessly by roadsides and open spaces which are sometimes borne out of noncompliance to waste disposal rules and improper facilities.…”

“…This indicates that respondents' working experience had a strong positive relationship with their living conditions in the study area. This is expected as households are more likely to make more income to improve their living conditions when they have more years of working experience [39,56]. In the same vein, the households' food security status parameter had a significant (p < 0.05) and positive (0.1175769) effect on their living conditions.…”

“…This finding corroborates the finding of [36][37][38] who indicate that education is a key to wealth and achievements in life and living standards of people and that of educated parents with high incomes have a tendency to provide their children with a conducive home and environment which can encourage access and retention of children. Poor educational attainment could also be a plausible reason why the majority of the participants could live in such an illegal, unauthorized portion of land that had not been previously proclaimed for residential use by the government [5,6,39].…”

Waste Disposal Practices in Low-Income Settlements of South Africa

“…This is a significant issue for municipalities as the financial costs associated with addressing the environmental and health impacts of littering and illegal dumping are higher than the cost of developing and operating cost-effective and adequate waste management systems [19]. Littering is a major environmental problem and previous research confirms that households perceive littering and dumping of waste as an environmental problem that requires measures for control or eradication [46]. Our research emphasizes that socio-economic factors affect how households address their waste practices.…”

Recycling, Norms, and Convenience: A Bivariate Probit Analysis of Household Data From a Swedish City

“…Arbués and Villanúa (2016) also adopt a related approach, but these authors focus on environmental concern rather than personal norms as an endogenous determinant of, in their case, households' recycling of batteries Omotayo et al (2020). consider the endogenous relationship between household recycling and the payment for waste disposal.…”