Department of Economics & Management, University of Ferrara, Via Voltapaletto, 11 44121, Ferrara, Italy.
Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Sciences, University of Ferrara, Via Luigi Borsari, 46 44121, Ferrara, Italy.
Environ Manage. 2023 Oct;72(4):850-861. doi: 10.1007/s00267-023-01809-w. Epub 2023 Mar 18.
Waste management systems have developed in recent years toward the adoption of sustainable management principles and practices, such as circular economy, zero waste, resource efficiency, waste avoidance, re-use, and recycling. Nevertheless, landfills continue to be used for waste disposal despite their risks related to contamination and effects on urban development. Most research on landfills focuses on their operational and technical aspects, while the performance and cost efficiency in managing landfills is less commonly studied, especially their post-closure management. However, improving efficiency is very relevant in the context of scarce public sector resources. This paper, therefore, analyzes the efficiency of post-closure management of landfills. Drawing on agency and stewardship theories, we focus on the difference in efficiency between public and private management of post-closure landfills. We use a linear mixed regression model to analyze data from 2015 to 2018 relating to 54 landfills (79% of which are privately managed) in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The results show that public management is more efficient than private management. Results contribute to defining drivers of cost and confirming a disparity in the performance of private and public management. Our results cast doubt on the assumption, which is prevalent in new public management theory, that private operators are more efficient than public ones. We conclude by highlighting that to reach efficiency, it is better to increase the effectiveness of regulation in terms of value for money, without pre-determined preferences for the type of management.
近年来，废物管理系统朝着采用可持续管理原则和实践的方向发展，例如循环经济、零废物、资源效率、废物避免、再利用和回收。尽管如此，尽管存在与污染和对城市发展的影响有关的风险，但仍继续使用垃圾填埋场来处理废物。大多数关于垃圾填埋场的研究都集中在其运营和技术方面，而对垃圾填埋场管理的绩效和成本效率的研究则较少，尤其是其封场后管理。然而，在公共部门资源稀缺的情况下，提高效率非常重要。因此，本文分析了垃圾填埋场封场后管理的效率。本文借鉴代理和管家理论，重点关注公共和私营部门对封场后垃圾填埋场管理效率的差异。我们使用线性混合回归模型来分析 2015 年至 2018 年意大利艾米利亚-罗马涅地区 54 个垃圾填埋场（其中 79%为私营管理）的数据。结果表明，公共管理比私营管理更有效。结果有助于确定成本驱动因素，并证实了私营和公共管理绩效的差异。我们的结果对新公共管理理论中普遍存在的假设提出了质疑，即私营运营商比公共运营商更有效率。最后，我们强调指出，为了提高效率，最好在物有所值的监管方面提高监管的有效性，而不是预先确定管理类型的偏好。
