Drift in policy implementation: Incentives thwarted in a recycling programme

Abstract

An incentives-based residential recycling programme was designed and implemented for improving residential waste sorting in Shanghai city, but showed very limited success in its performance. To identify why, this study systematically analysed each step of implementation using key informant interviews and site observations. Results show that policy intentions were retained in the policy devolution processes from Municipality to District, and then to Street (ward) levels, but the incentives concepts were effectively nullified in the further devolution to community-level governance. The local implementers focused on formal key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to satisfy inspections. However, the KPIs, which had been devised to allow ease of measurement, were found to unintentionally cause divergence from the policy intention of incentivisation of residents. Furthermore, high scores for these KPIs masked the implementation failure. This identification of the effective derailing of a policy via conscientious implementation is worth highlighting for avoidance in other programmes, in recycling or elsewhere.

The Impacts of Shanghai’s July 2019 Municipal Domestic Waste Management Regulations on Energy Production

“…We extracted information on ongoing waste policy implementation from our own studies in Shanghai since 2011 [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] and from current ongoing studies, to determine which, if any, recent implementation activities affiliated with the July 2019 policy were different to previous ones. These data held by our own research team includes observations in more than 100 communities, semi-structured interviews of key informants from a wide range of stakeholders, including government authorities at municipal, district, and ward level, Chinese not-for-profit groups, local residents, community committee members, resident associations, and estates management companies.…”

“…Some communities had made a few changes as early as 2015, as part of pilot programs, but these were not necessarily taken seriously or productive for good sorting, depending on each local case. Some communities had piloted particular types of programs, such as one based on smart cards, where residents could obtain credits for correct sorting [25]. Some communities had experienced mismatched programs, such as information-based ones [19], which sometimes did not actually provide appropriate bins for sorting.…”

“…Any values that our research team were able to elicit from government officials or community workers were always found to be rough estimates made by eye: if there were formal measures, we were not able to find them. Our own series of research studies [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] showed that in most cases the contamination levels were so bad that the Energies 2021, 14, 7658 8 of 13 so-called 'sorted' food waste streams were indistinguishable from the 'unsorted' stream, labelled 'residual' [17]. Only communities with high levels of interest from the residents, who for example saw themselves as an 'eco-community', or those with a deep impact from local volunteers or Chinese NFPs, appeared to produce sorted food waste with low contamination [20].…”

Depositing waste in ‘certain place’ at ‘certain time’: Does this policy improve recycling performance?

“…Shanghai Municipality has been developing and experimenting for many years, by encouraging interested stakeholders to develop different residential recycling programs. These include personal 'Green Account' incentives using smart cards (Bian et al, 2021;Tian, 2015); third-party involvement of various environmental not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) and businesses in delivery partnerships (SCAB and SLCAAB, 2019); and programs which impose restrictions of 'Certain Time & Certain Place' for residents to deposit their waste and recycling . Such programs are complementary to the main core waste management regulations formally implemented starting July 2019, which include city-wide standards of communal bins of standardized colours, specialized vehicles for pickup, and full infrastructure for further processing and final disposal/recycling.…”