Incentivizing recycling in local governments: the moderating role of fiscal conditions in the adoption of Pay-As-You-Throw recycling programs

Abstract

This article aims to extend the political market framework by exploring whether policy demand or supply is the key consideration for local governments’ policymaking and under what financial conditions local governments favor one over the other. We expect that local governments with good fiscal conditions are more likely to respond to public demand, but local governments with poor fiscal conditions pay more attention to supply influences. To test this idea, this study examines the moderating role of fiscal conditions within the political market framework regarding what factors account for adopting local governments’ Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) recycling programs in solid waste management (SWM). The results of the fixed-effect logistic model support that fiscal conditions play a moderating role in shifting organizational attention on the supply side based on cross-section data covering 1,840 local governments in the United States.