Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Voluntary monitoring of households in waste disposal: An application of the T

institutional analysis and development framework
⁎
Zhijian Zhang , Liange Zhao
School of Economics, Zhejiang Gongshang University, 18 Xuezheng Road, Hangzhou 310018, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: While increasing consensus has grown around the important role of monitoring in environmental resource
Waste disposal monitoring governance, little is known about under what conditions people would rather pay private costs to implement
Social capital monitoring and punishment. Using field survey data on communities and households from four suburb areas in
Intention behavior gap China, this paper employs Institutional Analysis and Development framework to empirically examine house-
Institutional analysis and development
holds’ willingness and actual activities on waste disposal monitoring. The empirical results show that population
framework
density, community modernization, and being male significantly increase the likelihood of households super-
vising waste disposal while community size and heterogeneity of wealth and ethnicity seriously impede the
involvement of households in waste disposal supervision. More importantly, our estimation results reveal that
staffing community with full-time cadres for sanitation management suppress the enthusiasm of households in
conducting waste disposal supervision, but stock of social capital and peer monitoring substantially increase the
intention to supervise waste disposal and the possibility of households engaging in waste disposal supervision
activities. In addition, social norms, household income, and householder age are primary predictors of the in-
tention-behavior gap between hypothetical willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior. Therefore,
improving community infrastructure and economic condition, reducing external intervention on community
affairs, and cultivating social capital stock are important approaches to enhance public participation in en-
vironmental governance.

1. Introduction series of institutional and ecological variables.

Various institutional approaches and arrangements have been
identified to avoid the occurrence of tragic outcomes and promote long-
term environmental resources conservation, including governmental
intervention, property privatization, and community collective action
(Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Coleman, 2009). However, poorly de-
signed or implemented institutions may fail to provide adequate in-
centives to resource users, and therefore lead to the tragedy of the
commons proposed by Hardin (Dietz et al., 2003). Recently, some
studies have begun to realize that monitoring plays an important role in
implementing these institutional approaches and arrangements. For
example, Gibson et al. (2005) declare that regular monitoring and
sanctioning of rules is necessary for successful resource management.
Pagdee et al. (2006) also find that effective enforcement has a strong
correlation with forest management performance, and monitoring is
closely associated with successful forest management. Moreover,
Coleman (2009) confirms that monitoring appears to be a powerful
predictor of changes in forest conditions, even after controlling for a
While an increasing consensus that strengthening monitoring can
effectively avoid the overuse of environmental resources has been
reached (Hayes et al., 2017; Frey et al., 2016; Luintel et al., 2018),
providing monitoring obviously presents a second-order collective ac-
tion problem (Panchanathan and Boyd, 2004; Ostrom, 2005). In es-
sence, costly monitoring is a second-order free ride problem
(Heckathorn, 1989; Wei and Jiang, 2013). Although recent laboratory
and field experiments have shown a widespread phenomenon that
participants are general willing to reward those who adhere to rules and
sanction those who deviate from them (Fehr and Gächter, 2000;
Ostrom, 1998; Henrich et al., 2006; Sefton et al., 2007), little is known
about why people would rather pay private costs to implement mon-
itoring and punishment (Boyd and Mathew, 2007). More specifically, it
is still unknown about under what conditions local actors can suc-
cessfully overcome collective-action problems to provide voluntary
monitoring within community. To the best of our knowledge, this im-
portant problem, especially in developing countries, has not received
enough attention as it deserves in the research literature.

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zj_zhang@zjgsu.edu.cn (Z. Zhang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.12.018
Received 3 May 2018; Received in revised form 26 November 2018; Accepted 12 December 2018
0921-3449/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
Guaranteeing the compliance and involvement of stakeholders has
been proved as a precondition for sustainable solid waste management
(Joseph, 2006; Nguyen et al., 2015). However, illegal or improper
waste dumping exist extensively in most developing countries
(Agamuthu and Fauziah, 2011; Imam et al., 2008; Šedová, 2016),
which imposes an urgent threat to human health, environment, es-
thetics, and economy. In addition to negatively affect surrounding
property values and lead to natural disasters such as fire at illegal dump
sites and flood caused by drains and culverts blocked with abandoned
waste, improper dumping of waste like toxins or hazardous materials
may sometimes causes short term and long term health issues. What’s
worse, beyond negative health outcomes due to pollution and toxic
waste, accumulations of waste improperly dumped provide a breeding
ground for mosquitos and mice, and consequently increase the spread
of infectious-diseases. Along with the accelerating process of urbani-
zation, a large number of rural people have moved to suburban areas in
China. In most suburb areas of China, the majority of local inhabitants
dump their wastes casually and do not deliver wastes at designated
places due to diversity reasons, such as lack of the habit of waste source
separation, poor awareness of environment and health, and long
walking distances of waste collection sites from their houses. Waste
dumped along roads, underneath bridges, at corners and in open areas
rather than in communal containers has gravely affected the health and
wellbeing of local residents, especially in communities without full-
time sanitation workers responsible for cleaning. How to monitor and
enforce households correctly deal with their waste and whether local
inhabitants are willing to voluntarily supervise others’ waste disposal
activities immediately influence the whole waste management perfor-
mance.
Peer monitoring normally prevents improper waste dumping be-
haviors through two channels. On the one hand, householders can deter
others from littering or illegal dumping through persuasion before they
happen. On the other hand, for those who ignore dissuasion and con-
tinue to improperly dumping waste, householders could punish them
through social sanctions like social exclusion, gossip, or felt unwanted,
left out. However, introduction of social sanction against the free-rider
problem of collective action requires social capital from actions that
simply facilitate information pooling (Collier, 2002). Intensive social
networks, reciprocity norms and sufficient trust in others can effectively
reduce monitoring cost (Ostrom, 2009). For instance, individuals with
higher stock of social capital are more likely to monitor and manage
their resources to achieve sustainable growth of forest in India (Behera,
2009) and fisheries in 44 countries (Gutiérrez et al., 2011), while the
barrenness of social capital has caused the lack of self-organized su-
pervision and the subsequent intensification of coastal erosion in Ar-
gentina (Rojas et al., 2014). Social capital might therefore effectively
bridge the intention-behavior gap in waste disposal supervision. As
individual decision-making is the outcome of the combined effects of
external circumstances and individual attributes, the Institutional
Analysis and Development (IAD) framework provides a useful analy-
tical paradigm to explore how different individuals interact with each
other in one action arena. This paper attempts to shed light on these
issues by identifying the potential factors leading to local households
spontaneously implementing voluntary monitoring in waste disposal.
We seek to answer the following specific questions: What role does
external third-party monitoring play in local households’ engagement
in voluntary monitoring in waste disposal? Does high stock of social
capital stimulate them to participate in waste disposal monitoring vo-
luntarily? Given the fact that some households might be willing to
monitor but take no actions in reality just as other intention behavior
discrepancy discovered in previous waste management researches
(Graham-Rowe et al., 2015; Russell et al., 2017), what are some of
salient factors lead to the gap between hypothetical willingness to
monitor and actual monitoring behavior.
Different from the existing literature, the main contributions of this
study are threefold: first, the analysis in this paper builds upon the
46
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
existing research, shifting the IAD framework away from common-pool
resources governance to waste disposal monitoring. To date, no study
has explicitly applied the framework to explore public participation in
waste management. Most waste management studies examine the de-
terminants of public participation exclusively from an independent in-
dividual perspective, but ignore the effects of higher levels on lower
levels and dissever the interactions among individuals. This study
therefore expands literature on individual voluntary monitoring and
provides unique insights into the determinants of household waste
disposal monitoring. Another feature of this study is that we take into
account willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior in waste
disposal simultaneously, and figure out the major factors that lead to
the two sides deviating from each other. Furthermore, this study ex-
amines the impacts of social capital and its components on household
waste disposal monitoring separately, and adopts multiple groups of
instrumental variables to alleviate the potential endogenous problem of
social capital. These techniques effectively reduce artificial bias caused
by single index of social capital in the previous literature, which im-
prove the robustness and reliability of our results.
2. Theoretical framework and research hypotheses
This paper uses IAD framework developed by Ostrom (2005) and
her colleagues to analyze household voluntary monitoring decisions in
waste disposal. IAD framework has been successfully applied to a
number of researches on common pool resource governance across the
world (see Andersson, 2006; Imperial and Yandle, 2005; Nigussie et al.,
2018; Raheem, 2014; Rahman et al., 2012). IAD framework is devoted
to explaining how external variables including biophysical conditions,
attributes of community and rules-in-use affect the incentives and the
resulting outputs of participants in an action arena, and then the out-
comes of interactions from such action arena are often assessed, which
in turn gives feedback to the system (McGinnis, 2011). Since household
monitoring in waste disposal process is essentially a matter of collective
action, employing IAD framework not only helps us explore monitoring
decisions of households in waste disposal at both community and in-
dividual levels, but also enables us identify key variables that affect
willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior of households in
the same framework. Fig. 1 shows the basic elements of IAD framework.
The primary task of IAD framework is to identify an action arena,
where participants interact with one another in a specific action si-
tuation. An action situation is the core component of an action arena,
which determines how the external variables are connected to the re-
sults through the participants’ behaviors in the whole framework
(Ostrom, 2010). In this study, the action situation is the collective ac-
tion dilemma of providing waste disposal monitoring. Waste disposal
monitoring refers to households’ supervision of whether other house-
holds’ waste disposal behaviors in community meet prescribed re-
quirements, such as whether other households in community waste
littering, sorting waste according to standards or delivering bags of
rubbish at designated places. In this context, participant attributes af-
fect the strategies they choose. External variables, such as biophysical
conditions, attributes of community and prevailing rules, form the en-
vironment of the action arena and constrain or enhance potential
Fig. 1. Basic components of the IAD framework (adapted from (Ostrom, 2005)).
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Table 1
Variable descriptions and the expected impacts on waste disposal monitoring.
Category/variable Variable definition and measurement Anticipated sign

Dependent variables
Willingness to monitor
Actual monitoring behavior
Biophysical conditions
Environmental quality
Waste pollution
Illegal dumping
Attributes of the community
Population density
Community size
Average income
Heterogeneity
Modernization
Rules in use
Sanitation cadres
Punishment measures
Peer monitoring
Attributes of participant
Gender
Age
Educational attainment
Household income
Pollution cognition
Social capital
Are you willing to monitor waste disposal activities of other households in community? ( = 0 if no; = 1 if yes) \
How often you monitor waste disposal activities of other households in community in daily life? ( = 1 if never; = 2 if \
sometimes; = 3 if frequently)
How has environmental quality of community changed compared to five years ago? ( = 1 if worsened; = 2 if no change; = 3 if −
improved)
Is waste pollution the worst polluter in community? ( = 0 if no; = 1 if yes) +
Does anyone dump wastes casually in community? ( = 1 if never; = 2 if sometimes; = 3 if often; = 4 if usually; = 5 if always) +
Number of residents per hectare (Ten thousand persons) +
Number of households (Thousand) ?
Average annual household income (Ten thousand Yuan) +
Composite index based on proportion of migrant population, poor–rich gap, and whether an ancestral hall exists in community ?
Composite index based on distance from the city center, proportion of cement roads, proportion of mobile phone users, ?
proportion of tap water users, proportion of households using commercial energy for cooking, and whether exist sewage
discharge facilities in community
Is the community equipped with full-time sanitation management cadres? ( = 0 if no; = 1 if yes) +
Does neighborhood committee would take punishment measures when households are found to be illegal dumping? ( = 0 if +
no; = 1 if yes)
The average monitoring frequency of other households in community (the mean value of “ = 1 if never; = 2 if sometimes; = 3 if +
frequently”)
You are? ( = 0 if female; = 1 if male) +
Your age is? (Years) ?
How many schooling years have you received? (Years) ?
Annual household income (Ten thousand Yuan) +
How many substances such as water, air, soil and food do you think would be negatively affected by waste pollution? +
(Categories)
Composite index based on social networks, social norms, interpersonal trust, and institutional trust ?

Notes: one thousand Yuan equals to 150.55 USD; the detailed measurements of heterogeneity, modernization and social capital can be obtained from the authors.

strategies. The outcomes of the interactions from the action arena after
being evaluated will retroact to current institutional arrangements.
In this study, monitoring decision of household on waste disposal
includes two dependent variables, which are willingness to monitor and
actual monitoring behavior. We assume that the set of variables af-
fecting willingness to monitor are the same as the set of variables in-
fluencing actual monitoring behavior while their specific impact in-
tensities vary. We also posit that Pr (willingness to monitor/actual
monitoring behavior) = F (biophysical conditions, attributes of the
community, rules in use, attributes of participants, θ ), where Pr in-
dicates the probability of an event occurring, F is a bivariate normal
link function, and θ is a parameter vector linking independent variables
to monitoring decisions. Table 1 describes the variables used in our
analysis and their anticipated effects on decisions of local households to
engage in waste disposal monitoring.
First, biophysical conditions. Natural environmental condition de-
termines the extent to which local inhabitants demand for environ-
mental resources. Each community might face more or less environ-
mental problems, but some communities are more polluted than others.
The scarcity of environmental resources is likely to force residents to
organize themselves to jointly manage environmental resources
(Conroy et al., 2002; Araral, 2009). In communities where waste pol-
lution is extremely serious, it is insufficient that only few people take
measures to protect environment while the majority choose to take a
free ride. More households have to involve themselves in collective
action if they want to satisfy their need for a good environment. In this
sense, the serious waste pollution we are talking about actually refers to
the scarcity of good environment resources. According to the argument,
proposed by Thomson and Perry (2006), and Dinar (2009), that re-
source scarcity is an important driving force for increasing levels of
collaboration, we hypothesize that, ceteris paribus, households living in
communities with more serious waste pollution are more willing to
supervise and enforce supervision. Three variables are used to reflect
biophysical conditions, including environmental quality, waste pollu-
tion and illegal dumping. The worse the environment quality, the more
serious the waste pollution; and the more frequent the phenomenon of
illegal dumping, the more willing and likely the households to parti-
cipate in waste disposal monitoring.
Second, attributes of communities. As a basic social unit of in-
habitants living together, each community has its own unique natural
and social characteristics, which profoundly affect the behaviors of
households. Following previous researches, we use five variables to
reflect community attributes in this study, and these are population
density, community size, average income, degree of heterogeneity, and
degree of modernization.
Population density. The greater the population density, the more
densely the households live together. In densely populated commu-
nities, waste disposal behavior of each other is more easily observed,
which helps reduce the difficulty and cost of supervision. At the same
time, highly inhabited communities are often characterized by the
nature of acquaintance society, and there more incentives and con-
straints based on reputation for households. Hence, the phenomenon of
illegal dumping is less and the cost of supervision is lower. We use the
number of residents per hectare to capture population density.
Community size. The influence of group size on collective action
remains a controversial and complex issue (Poteete and Ostrom, 2004).
Olson (1965) argues that not only the contribution of one individual to
collective result is negligible in larger group, but also the share of one
individual gains from the collective action is small. Besides, as group
size grows, the difficulty of effective supervision and the cost of co-
ordination among members will also increase. Therefore, the phe-
nomenon of free-riding in collective action will intensify with the ex-
pansion of the collective scale, which finally leads to the dilemma of
collective action. For instance, the difficulty of organizing collective
action is found to increase significantly as member number in some
irrigation associations rises (Fujiie et al., 2005). On the contrary, Oliver

47
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
and Marwell (1988) challenged the aforementioned viewpoint, and
argue that larger groups have more resources and are more likely to
have a critical mass of highly interested and resourceful members, and
thereby enhancing collective cooperation. In fact, successful common-
pool resource management may not be confined to smaller systems
(Frey et al., 2016), and large group can bear a small amount of be-
trayers (free riders) (Szolnoki and Perc, 2011). Different from the above
views, Ternstrom (2003) finds that group size can’t explain any sig-
nificant differences in collective action through empirical analysis. The
present study employs the number of households to measure commu-
nity size.
Average income. Average income reflects the level of economic
development. Coleman and Steed (2009) find that, in areas with higher
levels of GDP, forests are more valuable to local population, and local
inhabitants are more likely to participate in forest protection mon-
itoring. When households have a higher average income, their demands
for environmental quality will also increase, and they are more willing
and likely to participate in waste disposal supervision. In our study,
average income is measured by average annual household income.
Heterogeneity. Abundant evidence in empirical literature shows
that heterogeneity affects the likelihood of collective action. For ex-
ample, Baland and Platteau (1996) analyze the impact of heterogeneity
on collective action from the aspects of ethnicity and economic inter-
ests, and contend that racial and interest heterogeneity reduce collec-
tive cohesion, increase communication costs, and thus imped co-
operation. Zhou (2013) conclude that while pond contractors want to
farm as much fish as possible, the poor demand adequate water for
irrigation. The heterogeneity of interests not only undermines collective
action, but also causes inefficient use of waste resources. However, a
contending view holds that if a group is heterogeneous enough to
contain a critical mass who have a strong interest in and rich resources
for collective action, this critical mass would play a leading and ex-
emplary role in promoting the occurrence of cooperation (Oliver et al.,
1985). Employing the ethnographic data of pastoralists in East Africa,
Ruttan and Mulder (1999) indicate that income inequality lead to an
increase in grazing conservation because rich herders can compel poor
pastoralists to participate in collective action. Furthermore, compared
to low and high levels of wealth heterogeneity, moderate levels of
wealth heterogeneity is beneficial for collective action (Naidu, 2009).
Thus, the specific impact of heterogeneity on collective action is still
controversial. In this paper, we use Principal Components Analysis
(PCA) method to construct the heterogeneity variable on the basis of
the proportion of migrants, the poor–rich gap, and whether an ancestral
hall exists in the community.
Modernization. Highly modernized areas often have advanced
transport facilities, convenient trade market and developed commu-
nication networks, which are conducive for residents to communicate
with each other. Communication can effectively improve the possibility
of the occurrence of collective action (Ostrom, 1998; Smith, 2010), and
thus it favors the implementation of waste disposal monitoring.
Whereas, some scholars propose that households in modern community
generally have lower social identity and cohesion compared with those
in traditional community (Cai and He, 2014), and consequently, they
are unlikely to conduct waste disposal monitoring for collective inter-
ests. In our study, a composite index of modernization is created
through PCA method on the basis of distance from the city center,
proportion of cement roads, proportion of mobile phone users, pro-
portion of tap water users, proportion of households using commercial
energy for cooking, and whether sewage discharge facilities exist in the
community.
Third, rules in use. Rules designate share understanding of those
involved to who must, must not, or may take which actions affecting
others subject to sanctions and may evolve over time as those involved
in one action situation interact with others (Ostrom, 2010). They can be
formal legal documents, and can also be customs and habits formed by
long-tern interaction among group members (McGinnis, 2011). As for
48
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
formal rules in household waste management, our study includes sa-
nitation cadres and punishment measures.
External intervention policies are often considered as important
measures to avoid overexploitation of natural resources and the plight
of environmental degradation (Baral and Heinen, 2007). In China,
waste governance and enforcement vary widely across communities.
Wealthy communities usually have dedicated sanitation cadres and
their neighborhood committees are also increasingly concerned about
the problem of improper waste dumping, while the situation of poor
communities is opposite due to financial constraints. Sanitation cadres
are local government officials, who are in charge of sanitary inspection.
They will require rectification and recleaning if sanitation condition of
the inspected community does not meet the standard. Hence, we expect
that, in communities which are staffed with full-time sanitation cadres
and where the neighborhood committee takes punishment measures
against improper dumping behaviors, local households face less re-
sistance, consume less efforts to monitor waste disposal, and are more
willing and likely to participate in waste disposal supervision.
With regard to informal rules, average monitoring frequency of
other households is adopted to denote it. The behaviors of other
households in the community invisibly establish an informal standard
for the behavior of the household surveyed. Due to the factors like
conformity or herding effect, people’s cooperative behavior depends
largely on the behavior of other people around them (Röttgers, 2016;
Frey and Meier, 2004). We hypothesize that the higher the level of peer
monitoring, more willing and more likely the households to implement
waste disposal supervision, ceteris paribus.
Finally, attributes of participant. Apart from being influenced by
aforesaid external variables, households’ willingness and behavior of
waste disposal monitoring are also affected by their own attributes. In
this study, attributes of participants cover gender, age, educational
attainment, household income, pollution cognition and social capital.
Gender. Peer waste disposal monitoring usually occurs outdoors and
requires higher levels of social communication ability and influence
power. Because of the fact that division-of-labor arrangement of
“breadwinning men and homemaking women” is still widespread in
China (Liu and Anne, 2015), i.e., men are in charge of the outside af-
fairs while women are responsible for housework. Hence, we expect
that males are more willing and likely to implement waste disposal
monitoring compared with females even though females dispose of
waste at home more frequently.
Age. The impact of age on individual participation in collective
action remains unanimous. Dolisca et al. (2006) show older farmers are
less willing to engage in community forest management in Haiti, while
Azizi Khalkheili and Zamani (2009) find that age is positively corre-
lated with farmers’ participation in irrigation management but not
significant in Iran.
Educational attainment. Educated residents tend to have a sophis-
ticated awareness of environmental issues and are more able to identify
the potential benefits of collective management of environmental re-
sources, and are more willing to participate in environmental resource
management (Dolisca et al., 2006; Huang et al., 2009). Nevertheless,
empirical studies have also shown that there is a negative correlation
between the level of education and the collective participation of
members (Azizi Khalkheili and Zamani, 2009; Wang et al., 2016). In
this study, educational attainment is proxied by length of school year.
Household income. Compared to poor families, affluent families are
more willing and more capable of participating in collective manage-
ment of community resources, such as community forest and water
management (Dolisca et al., 2006; Huang et al., 2009). This paper uses
the annual household income to characterize it.
Pollution cognition. Cognitive structure of the actor is the basis for
the formation of an action, and cognition of necessity and potential
benefits of environmental protection is an important first step for actors
to take environmental protection measures (Reimer and Prokopy, 2014;
Larson et al., 2011). Therefore, the higher the perception of waste
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

pollution, the more willing and likely the households to supervise waste
disposal.
Social capital. The positive role of social capital in environmental
resource management has gained support from many scholars (Pretty,
2003; Brondizio et al., 2009; Pretty and Ward, 2001; Górriz-Mifsud
et al., 2016; Adger, 2003; Calfucura, 2018). However, Bodin and Crona
(2008) find that social capital may have a negative impact on mon-
itoring. Due to fear of reporting rule breaking would embarrass the off
;ender and they themselves would risk social rejection, fishers are re-
luctant to report rule breaking in community with relatively high levels
of social capital. From the above analysis, it is discovered that social
capital is an important factor affecting individual’s participation in
monitoring activities, but its effect is still obscure.
It is worth noting that the controversy of the concept of social ca-
pital itself is also an important reason leading to its blur effect. Much of
existing literature treats its components as social capital. For example,
Keene and Deller (2015); Paudel and Schafer (2009) and Behera (2009)
equate social capital with social networks, while Ahlerup et al. (2009);
Pan et al. (2009) and Baliamoune-Lutz (2011) understand social capital Fig. 2. Geographic distribution of the sample cities.
in a narrow sense as social trust. Social capital is actually a multi-di-
mensional construct consisting of social networks, norms and trust
questionnaire can be fully understood by respondents, we conducted a
(Putnam et al., 1993; Dekker, 2007; Górriz-Mifsud et al., 2016). In
small-scale pretest before the formal survey. During the period from
addition, according to different trust objects, social trust can also be
February to March 2015, we accomplished 30 questionnaires in the
classified as interpersonal trust and institutional trust (Rus and Iglič,
suburbs of Nanchang and Hangzhou through occasional sampling. Ac-
2005; He et al., 2015). We obtain the values of social capital and its
cording to actual feedback of respondents in pretest, we amended and
components through PCA method on measurement items of each di-
adjusted the questionnaire like option settings, expressions, ques-
mension.
tionnaire length, and subsequently obtained formal questionnaire. Be-
fore implementation of formal investigation, we gave a detailed ex-
3. Materials and methods
planation and training to enumerators to minimize interview bias.
Ultimately, we guided the enumerators to our four sample cities and
3.1. Study area and survey design
carried out the formal surveys in the period between July 2015 and July
2016.
Rural-urban fringe is selected as our study area, which often has the
In the suburbs of each city, we randomly selected three communities
dual characteristics of urban and rural areas. On the one hand, with
for surveys both at community and household levels. At the household
rapid economic development, the migrant population of outskirts in-
level, we determined the sample size of each community according to
creases fast, and life style and consumption structure of local in-
community population. We planned to complete 480 questionnaires
habitants are undergoing great changes. The lifestyle gradually con-
after carefully balancing the appropriate sample size for multiple re-
vergences with the counterpart of urban areas and generates rapidly
gression analysis and budget constraints. Hence, to maintain re-
increasing amount of household waste generated. On the other hand, as
presentativeness of our sample, the sample size for each community
the city supporting services are mainly concentrated in the downtown
was equal to population of this community divided by total population
area, waste management services generally lag behind in suburban
of all communities surveyed and multiplied by 480. When interviewers
areas. Although a small number of township governments or neigh-
had entered into the targeted community, they first collected basic in-
borhood committees collect and dispose of household garbage in sub-
formation upon community through local neighborhood committee.
urbs of developed areas, the phenomenon of waste improperly dumped
Specially, in interviews with community leaders, we obtained detailed
and indulgently heaped will continue to exist for a long time in most
data on biophysical conditions of community such as the situation of
suburban areas. Community is the basic residential unit of urban and
environmental quality, waste pollution, and illegal dumping, and socio-
rural residents, where waste disposal condition differs with each other.
economic characteristics of community like population density, com-
Communities with better economic conditions commonly have sanita-
munity size, average income, heterogeneity, and modernization, as well
tion cadres and their neighborhood committee would punish the of-
as rules in use on waste management.
fenders of illegal dumping when they were detected. In addition, due to
Next, under the help of local community cadres, we conducted face-
long history of evolution, each community has its own distinctive
to-face interviews with households to obtain basic information at the
characteristics, and residents living in one community more or less with
household level, including socio-demographic characteristics of
its mark. The decisions of household’s willingness and behavior on
householder, their cognition and behaviors on household waste. In
waste disposal monitoring are made in this community circumstance. In
order to minimize selection bias and confounding bias, households in
order to fully reflect regional conditions in China, we selected Chengde,
each community were selected on the basis of simple random sampling,
Yichang, Nanchang and Hangzhou as our sample cities (see Fig. 2).
using the most current household registration lists for each community.
In the process of questionnaire design, we use the scale developed
Meanwhile, the potential for any interviewer bias was also addressed in
by the World Bank to construct measurement questions for the four
several ways. First, interviewers were blinded to the outcome of interest
dimensions of social capital, namely, social networks, social norms,
and put the interviewees at ease so that a two-way, open communica-
interpersonal trust and institutional trust (Grootaert et al., 2004). This
tion climate existed. Second, interviews were ensured to act as a neutral
set of indicators has been widely used in previous researches such as
medium through which questions and answers were transmitted, and to
Halkos and Jones (2012) and Daniele and Geys (2015). As for the
avoid asking leading questions and giving overt signals such as smiling
measurement of heterogeneity and modernization, the questions mainly
and nodding approvingly. Third, after every interview that was un-
refer to the researches of Naidu (2009); Poteete and Ostrom (2004), and
dertaken, interviewee feedback was also collected to make sure that
Krishna and Uphoff (2002). In order to ensure the comprehensiveness
they were in no way influenced or biased by the interviewer. The field
and reasonableness of the questionnaire design, and questions in the

49
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

survey issued a total of 480 questionnaires, and 404 valid ques- Table 2
tionnaires were finally kept after dropping those with unanswered Principal components analysis of heterogeneity, modernization, and social ca-
questions or obviously contradictory answers. pital.
Item Loading Item Loading
3.2. Estimation model
Heterogeneity Activities 0.758
Proportion of migrant 0.896 Factor 2: Social norm
Since our study aims to examine willingness and behavior of population
household on waste disposal monitoring simultaneously, we employ Poor–rich gap 0.607 Assistances 0.822
bivariable probit model to conduct regression estimation following the An ancestral hall exists −0.619 Reciprocities 0.794
method of Greene (2012). It should be noted that although our survey Eigenvalue: 1.555 Thefts −0.737

data have a hierarchical structure, a multilevel model is not well suited Modernization Disputes −0.865
for application where the sample is routinely recommended with at Distance from the city center −0.898 Eigenvalue: 1.850
Proportion of cement roads 0.833 Factor 3: Institutional
least 30 groups (Hox, 1998; Clarke, 2008). In order to correct the biased
trust
downward standard errors when using single-level models, we apply Proportion of mobile phone 0.786 Government 0.900
robust standard errors clustered at the community level to substitute users
the conventional standard errors (Cameron et al., 2011). Defining Proportion of tap water users 0.852 Committee 0.815
Share using commercial energy 0.903 Environment 0.888
outcome variable y1* is the latent variable of respondents’ monitoring
for cooking
willingness and y1 is the observable variable of that, and also defining Sewage discharge facilities exist 0.856 Eigenvalue: 2.263
outcome variable y2* is the latent variable of respondents’ monitoring Eigenvalue: 4.392 Factor 4: Interpersonal
behavior and y2 is the observable variable of that, the decisions of re- trust
spondent i on waste disposal monitoring can be expressed as the fol- Social capital Trust 0.817
lowing equation system: Factor 1: Social network Distrust −0.818
Acquaintances 0.743 Trustworthy 0.765
y1*i = x1i β1 + ε1i Friends 0.822 Eigenvalue: 1.760
y2*i = x2i β2 + ε2i Helpers 0.840
(1)

Where x1i and x2i are independent variable vectors, β1 and β2 are
parameter vectors need to be estimated, ε1i and ε2i are random dis- sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s test of sphericity indicate that there is
turbance terms, and the observable variables y1i and y2i are determined a strong relationship between the items, and that a PCA is appropriate.
by the following equation The correlations between measurement items and corresponding fac-
tors ranging from 0.746 to 0.893 indicate satisfactory construct va-
⎧ 1ify *2i ≤ r1 lidity. With respect to social capital with multidimensional nature, we
⎧1ify1*i > 0 ⎪
labeled the four factors as ‘social network’, ‘social norm’, ‘institutional
y1i = , y2i = 2ifr1 < y *2i ≤ r2
⎨ 0ify1*i ≤ 0 ⎨
⎩ ⎪ 3ifr2 < y *2i trust’, and ‘interpersonal trust’ respectively after comprehensive con-
⎩ (2)
sideration of the meanings of all measurement items which were in-
In addition, we assume that disturbances (ε1i, ε2i ) from Eq. (1) follow cluded in corresponding factor group.
two-dimensional joint normal distribution with an expectation of 0, a Table 3 reports descriptive statistics on all the variables in our
variance of 1 and a correlation coefficient ofρ , and are orthogonal to analysis. As shown in Table 3, for biophysical conditions variables, on
explanatory variables in x1i and x2i , the correlation matrix of the two can average, respondents believe that environmental quality in community
be written as has not changed dramatically within five years, the phenomenon that
inhabitants dump their wastes casually happened occasionally, and
ε 1 ρ⎤ ⎞
⎡ ε1 ⎤ |x1, x2 ∼ N ⎜⎛ ⎡ 0 ⎤, ⎡ ⎟
38.1% of respondents believe that waste pollution is the most serious
⎣ 2⎦ ⎝ ⎣0⎦ ⎢ ⎣ρ 1⎥⎦⎠ (3) pollution in community. As for community attributes, on average, po-
pulation density of community is 20.87 thousand people per hectare,
Obviously, if ρ = 0 , Eq. (1) is equivalent to two separate probit
and community size is 2.1 thousand households. Regarding rules in use,
equations; if ρ > 0 or ρ < 0 , then Eq. (1) is a bivariable probit model. In
the former case, Eq. (1) reduces to a set of independent probit models.
In the latter case, respondents’ willingness to monitor and actual Table 3
monitoring behavior are complementary or exclusive with each other. Sample descriptive statistics.
As behavioral willingness tends to be positively associated with actual Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
behavior although sometimes it's weak, there is a need to conduct a
Environmental quality 2.042 0.886 1 3
bivariable probit model instead of running two regressions individually.
Waste pollution 0.381 0.486 0 1
In actual regression operation, as willingness to monitor is a binary Illegal dumping 3.002 0.923 1 5
variable and actual monitoring behavior is an ordered variable, we use Population density 8.268 6.354 1.254 20.589
probit model to estimate the former and use ordered probit model to Community size 2.087 1.014 0.482 3.523
estimate the latter. Average income 9.492 3.366 5.403 16.346
Heterogeneity 0 1 −2.475 1.619
Modernization 0 1 −2.496 0.802
4. Result and discussion Sanitation cadres 0.347 0.476 0 1
Punishment measures 0.351 0.478 0 1
Peer monitoring 1.700 0.512 1 2.591
4.1. Descriptive statistical analysis
Gender 0.500 0.501 0 1
Age 41.339 13.965 16 81
As heterogeneity and modernization variables consist of several Educational attainment 11.083 4.012 0 20
distinct but associated elements, and social capital is a multi- Household income 9.492 8.221 0.200 88.000
dimensional concept, we employ PCAs to group these elements into a Pollution cognition 3.087 1.042 1 5
Social capital 0 1 −2.759 3.945
small number of interpretable underlying factors. Table 2 presents the
Willingness to monitor 0.606 0.489 0 1
results of PCA. In each PCA analysis, we select the factor axes with an Actual monitoring behavior 1.700 0.760 1 3
eigenvalue above one. Both the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of

50
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Table 4
Mean statistics across waste disposal monitoring groups.
Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior Willing to but MD (did –
did not wiling to
do(n = 42) but did not
do)
No(n = 159) Yes(n = 245) MD Never Sometimes Frequently MD MD MD
(Yes-No) (n = 195) (n = 135) (n = 74) (S-N) (F-N) (F-S)

Biophysical conditions
Environmental 2.019 2.057 0.038 2.021 2.022 2.135 0.001 0.114 0.113 2.021 0.041
quality
Waste pollution 0.371 0.388 0.017 0.359 0.452 0.311 0.093 −0.048 −0.141 0.331 0.071
Illegal dumping 3.069 2.959 −0.110 3.077 2.941 2.919 −0.136 −0.158 −0.022 3.048 −0.115

Community attributes
Population 8.096 8.379 0.284** 8.102 8.355 8.546 0.254* 0.444*** 0.191 8.427 −0.005
density
Community size 2.209 2.008 −0.201* 2.193 2.010 1.948 −0.183** −0.245** −0.062 2.133 −0.145
Average income 9.190 9.688 0.498* 9.612 9.320 9.490 −0.292 −0.122 0.17 9.652 −0.272
Heterogeneity 0.348 −0.226 −0.574*** 0.399 −0.228 −0.636 −0.627*** −1.035*** −0.408*** −0.217 −0.155
Modernization −0.080 0.052 0.132** −0.051 0.034 0.072 0.085* 0.123*** 0.038 0.045 0.002

Rules in use
Sanitation cadres 0.447 0.282 −0.165*** 0.451 0.341 0.081 −0.110 −0.370*** −0.260*** 0.395 −0.146
Punishment 0.321 0.371 0.050 0.318 0.378 0.392 0.060 0.074 0.014 0.343 0.040
measures
Peer monitoring 1.362 1.920 0.558*** 1.376 1.889 2.213 0.513*** 0.837*** 0.324*** 1.742 0.262

Attributes of participant
Gender 0.434 0.543 0.109** 0.456 0.489 0.635 0.033 0.179** 0.146 0.524 0.017
Age 40.333 41.992 1.659 37.585 41.948 50.122 4.363*** 12.537*** 8.174*** 32.571 12.271**
Educational 11.157 11.035 −0.122 11.282 10.989 10.730 −0.293 −0.552 −0.259 11.135 −0.238
attainment
Household 9.169 9.702 0.533 9.056 9.878 9.937 0.822** 0.881** 0.059 9.079 0.820***
income
Pollution 2.918 3.196 0.278 2.908 3.230 3.297 0.322 0.389 0.067 3.192 0.062
cognition
Social capital −0.714 0.463 1.177*** −0.677 0.352 1.141 1.029*** 1.818*** 0.789*** 0.272 0.359

Notes: *, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; MD (S-N) denotes the mean difference between sometimes and never,
MD (F–N) denotes the mean difference between frequently and never, and MD (F–S) denotes the mean difference between frequently and sometimes; Bonferroni
adjustment made for multiple comparisons.

on average, 34.7% of respondents express that their communities are
staffed with full-time sanitation management cadres, 35.1% of re-
spondents indicate that their neighborhood committees will take pun-
ishment measures when households are found to be illegal dumping,
and the mean value of peer monitoring is 1.7, i.e., the frequency of peer
monitoring is between never monitor and sometimes monitor.
Concerning participant attributes, the proportion of male re-
spondents is 50.0%, the average age and average education level of
respondents are 41.3 years old and 11.8 years respectively, and average
annual household income of respondents is 94.9 thousand Yuan.
Besides, respondents believe that improper waste disposal will result in
three types of pollution among water pollution, air pollution, soil pol-
lution, food pollution and other pollution on average. As far as de-
pendent variables, 60.6% of respondents express willingness to monitor
other households’ waste disposal behavior while only 51.7% of re-
spondents indicate that they have implemented waste supervision be-
havior in daily life. Among the latter, respondents who sometimes
implement monitoring behavior account for 33.4%, and respondents
who frequently implement monitoring behavior account for 18.3% (see
Table 4). In general, the statistical characteristics of the sample are
basically in line with our expectations, indicating reasonable re-
presentativeness of the sample.
In order to explore the relationship between waste disposal mon-
itoring and independent variables, we report the mean values of vari-
ables across waste disposal monitoring groups, and mean differences
between them using bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons
(the detailed results are shown in Table 4). It is not difficult to find that
differences in environmental quality, waste pollution and illegal
dumping among the groups of waste disposal monitoring are small and
insignificant, suggesting that waste disposal supervision has no obvious
correlation with biophysical conditions. For community attributes, re-
spondents in communities with higher population densities tend to
more willing and frequently to conduct waste disposal supervision
while respondents in larger communities are more likely to be reluctant
to supervise and do not implement supervision in reality. The connec-
tion between household waste disposal supervision and average income
is relatively complex. In communities with higher average incomes,
respondents are more willing to engage in waste disposal monitoring
but do not put supervisory behavior into practice. Respondents in
communities with medium level of average income appear to regularly
conduct waste disposal supervision. In addition, respondents are more
willing and likely to implement waste disposal supervision as commu-
nity heterogeneity decreases and community modernization increases.
For application rules, respondents in communities without full-time
sanitation cadres are more willing to and more often conduct waste
disposal monitoring. There is a modest positive correlation between
waste disposal monitoring and neighborhood committee taking pun-
ishment measures when households are found to be illegal dumping.
Respondents are more willing and likely to implement the supervision
of household waste disposal when their peers frequently participate in
waste disposal monitoring activities. For attributes of participant, males
and elders are more willing and likely to conduct household waste
disposal supervision while the relationship between educational at-
tainment and waste disposal monitoring of respondents appears a weak
negative correlation. In addition, respondents with higher household
income, higher pollution cognition or higher stock of social capital are
more willing and likely to perform supervision compared to others, but
the differences in pollution cognition across willingness to monitor and

51
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Table 5
Determinants of respondents’ waste disposal monitoring.
Separate estimation Joint estimation

Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior

Environmental quality 0.014 (0.084) −0.012 (0.070) 0.075 (0.079) −0.016 (0.067)
Waste pollution 0.013 (0.166) 0.032 (0.133) −0.098 (0.150) −0.005 (0.130)
Illegal dumping 0.053 (0.093) −0.015 (0.083) 0.102 (0.084) −0.006 (0.084)
Population density 0.071** (0.029) 0.045** (0.020) 0.071*** (0.023) 0.049** (0.020)
Community size −0.323** (0.159) −0.282** (0.143) −0.292* (0.153) −0.295** (0.139)
Average income 0.121** (0.054) 0.036 (0.037) 0.140*** (0.045) 0.040 (0.035)
Heterogeneity −0.635*** (0.175) −0.576*** (0.124) −0.543*** (0.142) −0.565*** (0.122)
Modernization 0.983*** (0.221) 0.730*** (0.155) 0.946*** (0.188) 0.758*** (0.152)
Sanitation cadres −0.096* (0.053) −0.134** (0.061) −0.120* (0.063) −0.116** (0.057)
Punishment measures 0.186 (0.173) 0.056 (0.149) 0.146 (0.156) 0.031 (0.148)
Peer monitoring 0.710** (0.321) 0.623** (0.302) 0.685** (0.314) 0.644** (0.305)
Gender 0.292* (0.157) 0.252* (0.134) 0.306** (0.141) 0.242* (0.130)
Age 0.002 (0.008) 0.013* (0.007) 0.003 (0.007) 0.012* (0.007)
Education 0.021 (0.027) 0.004 (0.023) 0.019 (0.023) −0.005 (0.023)
Income 0.012 (0.012) 0.021*** (0.007) 0.010 (0.011) 0.022*** (0.007)
Pollution cognition 0.074 (0.077) 0.067 (0.073) 0.027 (0.068) 0.072 (0.069)
Social capital 0.915*** (0.144) 0.987*** (0.117) 0.937*** (0.129) 0.964*** (0.114)
ρ 0.000(fixed) 0.764*** (0.076)
Log-likelihood −413.230 −360.193
AIC 896.460 790.386
BIC 1036.509 930.436
Observations 404 404

Notes: figures in parentheses are clustered standard errors of estimates; *, **, and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; AIC
denotes Akaike's information criterion, and BIC denotes Bayesian information criteria; to save the space, this table does not report the estimates and standard
deviations of the cut points in ordered probit model, as well as the estimates and standard deviations of the constants in probit model.

actual monitoring behavior are small and insignificant. Finally, com-
pared to respondents who have carried out waste disposal monitoring
behavior, those who willing to but do not conduct waste disposal
monitoring behavior are often younger, with lower household income
or lower stock of social capital.
Although the above descriptive statistics initially support some of
our hypotheses, simple mean comparison method can neither control
for simultaneous influence of other factors nor reflect the specific im-
pact of our concerned variables. Therefore, more reliable conclusions
require further quantitative analysis.
4.2. Baseline regression result and discussion
Table 5 shows basic estimation results of the models. In the columns
of separate estimation, the correlation coefficient is fixed at zero.
Namely, the equations of willingness to monitor and actual monitoring
behavior are estimated individually. In the columns of joint estimation,
we estimate willingness to monitor equation and actual monitoring
behavior equation together, and allow the two equations to be related.
It appears that the estimation results of this two approaches are basi-
cally the same in terms of coefficient magnitude and significance level
of each variable, to a large extent indicating that the stability and re-
liability of the results are eligible. Nevertheless, the estimation of cor-
relation coefficient shows that the null hypothesis that correlation
coefficient can be fixed to zero is rejected at the conventional sig-
nificance levels, and the correlation coefficient is 0.764. This demon-
strates that willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior in-
deed have a complementary relationship, which is in line with our
expectation that respondents with higher monitor willingness are more
likely to conduct waste disposal monitoring behavior. Meanwhile,
likelihood ratio test, Akaike information criterion and Bayesian in-
formation criterion show that the results of joint estimation is much
better than those of separate estimation. Therefore, we will mainly
focus on the regression results of joint estimation.
4.2.1. Influence of biophysical conditions on household waste disposal
monitoring
As reported in Table 5, inconsistent with our expectations, en-
vironmental quality, waste pollution and illegal dumping cannot pass
the significant test in both equations of willingness to monitor and
actual monitoring behavior, indicating that scarcity of good environ-
mental quality does not significantly affect the willingness and possi-
bility of respondents to supervise household waste disposal. According
to comparison of the sample characteristics, there are no notable
changes in environmental quality of most communities within five
years, about 38.1% of respondents in each community holding that
waste pollution is the most serious pollution in their community, and
the phenomenon of illegal waste dumping occasionally exists in all
communities. This manifest environmental conditions of community do
not show sizable differences with changes in geographical factors, and
environmental conditions are not the fundamental predictors that ex-
plain variation in respondents’ waste disposal monitoring. Huang et al.
(2009) also found that scarcity of water resources in villages was not
directly related to the establishment of water resources collective
management and farmers’ water association. Mushtaq et al. (2007)
further confirmed that scarcity of water resources in the Zhanghe Basin
area, where water scarcity was similar, did not significantly account for
the differences in collective pond management performance.
4.2.2. Influence of community attributes on household waste disposal
monitoring
Population density effectively increases respondent’s willingness to
monitor waste disposal and the possibility of participation in waste
disposal monitoring activities at the 5% significance level or better,
which is coincide with our expectation. In communities with large
population densities, on the one hand, it is easier for respondents to
observe and know waste disposal behavior of other households and thus
reduce the monitoring cost; on the other hand, the monitoring behavior
for the purpose of protecting community environment is more likely to
be recognized and appreciated by other households thereby increasing
perceived benefits such as intrinsic pleasure and positive social image.
Community size substantially suppresses the willingness and

52
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
behavior of respondents to monitor waste disposal at the 1% level. This
is similar to the result of Wang et al. (2013). They found that relatively
large group size of users in surface irrigation, compared to the group
size of users in groundwater irrigation, led to an increase of monitoring
costs. Araral (2009) further concluded that group size was positively
associated with monetary free riding of farmers in operation and
maintenance of public irrigation systems. It can be seen that as the size
of community expands, transaction costs like coordination costs and
supervisory costs are gradually increasing, and individuals are no
longer willing to participate in waste disposal supervision when trans-
action costs obviously exceed the benefits that critical mass can bring.
The coefficient of average income is significantly positive in the
equation of willingness to monitor while it has no significant difference
compared with zero value in the actual monitoring behavior equation,
indicating that average household income in one community only af-
fects respondents’ intention to monitor waste disposal, and has little
statistical correlation with respondents’ supervisory behavior on waste
disposal. The possible reason for this discrepancy might be as follows.
The average household income in one community represents the eco-
nomic conditions of the community. Although some researches in
psychology find that people in developing countries tend to show more
pro-environmental values than those in developed areas, it partly be-
cause that the environmental pollution in developing countries is far
more serious than the counterpart in developed countries. With all else
held equal, the better the economic condition, the stronger the en-
vironmental awareness of the respondents, which largely determines a
higher willingness to supervise waste disposal. Whereas, actual super-
vision of respondents is not only related to their willingness to super-
vise, but also more related to their own conditions and needs, which are
determined by household level factors such as household income, and
leisure time.
Heterogeneity has a negative impact on both the willingness to
monitor and actual monitoring behavior at the 1% level. Respondents
are more willing and likely to conduct waste disposal supervision when
community members are homogeneous. A supporting view is postu-
lated by DöSilva and Pai (2003) who argued that due to a serious ethnic
differentiation of local residents and a large gap between the rich and
the poor, internal coordination costs and supervision costs were higher,
which finally led to low performance of collective forest and river basin
management. Using survey data from irrigation communities, Ito
(2012) came to a similar conclusion that income disparity and hetero-
geneity of ethnic groups had significant negative impacts on household
labor contribution to irrigation facilities. Nevertheless, note that, there
are variety of heterogeneity like wealth heterogeneity, racial hetero-
geneity, cultural heterogeneity and interest heterogeneity, and different
types of heterogeneity may have different effects on collective action,
and the effect of one specific heterogeneity will also be different in
diverse institutional contexts (Poteete and Ostrom, 2004). For example,
while Ruttan and Mulder (1999) discovered that income inequality can
promote grazing conservation in East African because rich herders can
force poor pastoralists to participate in collective action, Wang et al.
(2016) indicated that economic heterogeneity captured by Gini coeffi-
cient had a significant adverse eff ;ect on collective irrigation in China.
However, inconsistent with above two sides, Naidu (2009) confirmed
that moderate wealth disparity was associated with high collective
management and moderate levels of social diversity decreased collec-
tive management.
Modernization significantly promotes willingness to monitor and
implementation of waste disposal monitoring at the 1% level. In com-
munities with higher levels of modernization, such as developed
transportation and communication networks, convenient water supply
and energy using, respondents are easier to communicate with each
other, which can more effectively promote the occurrence of coopera-
tion for collective interests (Ostrom, 1998; Smith, 2010). Furthermore,
according to Maslow's need hierarchy theory, after the improvements of
basic material conditions for survival and social contact, respondents
53
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
may be more willing to work together to further improve the en-
vironment condition, such as community vegetation and sanitation
conditions.
4.2.3. Influence of application rules on household waste disposal monitoring
Equipping community with sanitation cadres reduce respondent’s
willingness to supervise waste disposal and possibility of conducting
supervisory behavior at the 10% or less level, which seems to be in-
consistent with our expectations. A possible explanation for this is that,
for a long time, the top-down social control pattern has made the public
form a habit to serious depend on government, and the establishment of
sanitation cadres has exacerbated the conceptions of local households
that maintaining a good sanitation environment is the responsibility of
relevant cadres. Therefore, staffing community with full-time cadres for
sanitation management suppresses respondents’ initiative to participate
in waste disposal monitoring. This confirms the previous work by
Coleman and Steed (2009), who found that government monitoring and
sanctioning may replace local efforts and be counterproductive since
local forest users feel like government officials can or should be re-
sponsible for these activities. This in turn may have undesirable con-
sequences for private waste disposal monitoring. However, it should not
be construed to mean that external enforcement should be abandoned
for voluntary monitoring since government often play a fundamental
role in checking abuse of local power and sustain local conservation
efforts (Ostrom, 1990; Lejano and Ingram, 2007).
The coefficients of punishment measures have no significant dif-
ference with zero value at the 10% level in both equations of will-
ingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior, demonstrating that
willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior of local in-
habitants on waste disposal are not absolutely associated with whether
neighborhood committee takes punishment measures to against illegal
dumping. One potential reason for this result is that, on the one hand,
due to limited budget or lack of enough staff members, neighborhood
committees of some communities hardly take any punishment measures
for illegal waste dumping even though punishment is one of their work
responsibilities; on the other hand, with the transformation of China's
economy and society, the dominating position of neighborhood com-
mittees in the hearts of residents has gradually declined, and its le-
gitimacy has even been questioned, hence the phenomenon that local
residents do not comply with punitive measures is also commonplace
(Anderies et al., 2004). Therefore, unlike sanitation cadres significantly
reducing the probability of performing monitoring behavior, commu-
nity punishments have an insignificant effect on individual waste dis-
posal monitoring.
Consistent with our expectations, peer monitoring drastically in-
creases the willingness to supervise and the initiative to implement
supervisory behavior on waste disposal at the 5% level, indicating that
most respondents are conditional cooperator, that is, they will engage
in monitoring if others monitor waste disposal. This resonates with the
results of Jaramillo et al. (2010) that members invest more time in
monitoring their forest in groups with larger conditional cooperator
share. We conjecture that the reason why households’ willingness to
monitor and actual monitoring behavior may depend largely on mon-
itoring behavior of others is that other people’s behavior establishes a
reference benchmark or conduct norms for their behavior. Therefore,
when their neighbors carry out supervisory behavior, in order to avoid
isolation and access to group identity, households have to choose to
follow the normative guidelines to implement supervisory behavior. For
example, interviewed household also implements waste recycling be-
havior when other households implement waste recycling behavior
(Abbott et al., 2013). On the other hand, because of incompleteness of
information and with limited knowledge or computational capabilities,
they often believe that most people’s opinions are correct when they get
information from others, especially when it is difficult to determine
whether the act is in their favor or not, and thus implement herd be-
havior in complex situations (Velez et al., 2009; Griskevicius et al.,
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
2006).
4.2.4. Influence of participant attributes on household waste disposal
monitoring
Gender is significantly positively correlated with respondent’s
willingness to monitor waste disposal and their actual behavior, in-
dicating that men are more willing and likely to participate in house-
hold waste disposal activities than women, which is accordance with
the findings of females participating in environmental resource man-
agement less in other developing countries (Coulibaly-Lingani et al.,
2011). In China, long-term social norms and conventions shape the
gender division of labor, resulting that women are more confined to
family affairs while men are adept at the public affairs. Although
women are frequently responsible for disposing their waste at home,
men are more likely to supervise waste disposal of their neighbors since
peer monitoring involves neighborhood interaction and governance of
public affairs.
Inconsistent with previous studies (e.g., Azizi Khalkheili and
Zamani, 2009; Dolisca et al., 2006), the coefficient of age does not
differ significantly from zero in willingness to monitor equation but is
significantly positive in actual monitoring behavior equation. This
signifies that people with different ages do not appear statistically dif-
ferent willingness to monitor waste disposal while older respondents
are more likely to supervise domestic waste disposal in real life. The
explanation is that although respondents with different ages have si-
milar intentions for waste disposal monitoring, older respondents have
more leisure time to associate themselves with their neighbors com-
pared with young residents who usually need to go to work early and
come back late. Therefore, elders are more likely to conduct waste
disposal monitoring behavior.
Education attainment does not matter in both equations of will-
ingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior, which is consistent
with the results of Nenadovic and Epstein (2016). They found that
participation in surveillance activities of fishers was not straightly re-
lated to their education levels. Although highly educated households
may have advanced ideas and good environmental awareness, out of
rational economic man principle and objective time constraints,
households with higher education levels are not necessarily involved in
community environmental protection activities. In fact, the effect of
education on people participating in public affairs is to a large extent
context-dependent (Wang et al., 2016).
Household income cannot significantly explain willingness to
monitor waste disposal but can significantly explain actual monitoring
behavior at conventional significance levels. Potential explanations for
this are that, on the one hand, average income at the community level
to a certain extent weakens the explanatory power of household income
to predict respondents’ willingness to monitor waste disposal. On the
other hand, the opportunity cost of monitoring for wealthy households
is high in general, and hence their willingnesses to monitor are low.
Nevertheless, because of their high household income, their demand for
good environmental quality are also high and thus have to implement
supervision.
The coefficient of pollution cognition is positive in both equations of
willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior, but it is not
significantly different from zero at the conventional significance levels.
Although previous studies have emphasized that environmental pollu-
tion cognition is a fundamental factor in explaining stakeholders taking
relevant response measures (Anderson et al., 2007; Shi and He, 2012),
environmental pollution cognition is only a necessary but not sufficient
condition for stakeholder to take actions. In some coastal areas of Ar-
gentina, even when citizens have recognized the problem of erosion and
vulnerability, communities are still absence of corresponding mon-
itoring and sanction rules to protect the coast (Rojas et al., 2014).
The coefficient of social capital is significantly positive at the 1%
level, implying that respondents with higher stock of social capital are
more willing and likely to implement waste disposal monitoring. This
54
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
conforms with the notion that informal monitoring processes among
members are crucial for public resource management and the existence
of an abundance of social capital is the key factor in the implementation
of informal monitoring (Rojas et al., 2014; Calfucura, 2018). Behera
(2009) analogously found that presence of social capital was also likely
to promote good forest growth.
Social capital can powerfully refrain moral hazard and opportunistic
behaviors by promoting information flowing on individual conduct and
increasing the potential cost of deceiving or violation in any single
transaction, and eventually reduce supervision cost (Durlauf and
Fafchamps, 2005; Grafton, 2005). In addition, social capital helps to
increase the opportunities for communication between stakeholders
and accelerate the diffusion of relevant knowledge (Putnam et al.,
1993; Adger, 2003). These are conducive to reducing the cognitive
conflict of stakeholders on environmental resources, which was found
to be a prominent factor in hindering stakeholder participation in col-
lective cooperation (Adams et al., 2003). Finally, social capital may also
promote supervision activities through reshaping individual pre-
ferences. When any uncooperative or free riding behavior will be ex-
posed in dense social networks and suffer from reputation sanctions,
social capital forces people to feel guilty for violating collective inter-
ests and to feel satisfied for preserving collective interests through re-
ciprocity norms and mandatory trust (Passy and Monsch, 2014; Passy
and Giugni, 2000). Social capital thus unconsciously changes stake-
holders’ perceived benefits and costs for involvement in collective ac-
tion (Jones et al., 2010). In such a case waste disposal supervision has
become a habitual preference.
4.3. Dimensionality estimation and endogeneity problem of social capital
4.3.1. Dimensionality estimation of social capital
The role of social capital in household waste disposal monitoring is
one of main focus of this paper. As mentioned in the preceding section,
most of the existing literature regarded one component of social capital
as itself and the research that examined the impact of social capital
from multiple dimension was very limited. Therefore, we replace social
capital variable with its four components and re-estimate the original
model. The detailed estimation results are reported in Table 6. It is
apparent from this table that the results of joint estimation are better
than those of separate estimation while the estimation results of these
two approaches are basically the same in terms of coefficient signs and
significances.
Social network significantly boosts respondent’s willingness to
monitor waste disposal and actual behavior at the 5% level or less. In a
broad and intensive social network, it’s easier for supervisors to observe
and know waste disposal behaviors of other households and thereby
reduce the cost of their supervisory behavior; on the other hand, illegal
waste dumping and other uncivilized behaviors can easily be detected,
and the information will be quickly spread in social networks once
offenders are detected. For reputation reasons, households have to re-
duce or even eliminate the undesirable behaviors in disposal of do-
mestic waste, which in turn further cut down the costs of supervision.
Likewise, Nenadovic and Epstein (2016) documented that fishers’
membership to informal fishing groups or fishing cooperatives sig-
nificantly increased the likelihood of fishers’ participation in surveil-
lance of their peers.
The coefficient of social norms cannot pass the significance test in
willingness to monitor equation, but it is significantly positive in actual
monitoring behavior equation, revealing that social norms only affect
respondent’s actual behaviors. This discrepancy might be easy to un-
derstand. Social norms are constraints or encouragements of social
behavior, and provide a cognitive shortcut for people to comply with
even though they don't realize the influence of social norms on them-
selves. Nevertheless, they are not directly related to people’s will-
ingness. The crucial role of social norms in waste governance has at-
tracted the attention of some researches, such as the impact of social
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Table 6
The impacts of social capital components on respondents’ waste disposal monitoring.
Separate estimation Joint estimation

Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior

Social network 0.649** (0.301) 0.473*** (0.117) 0.423*** (0.138) 0.492*** (0.117)
Social norm 0.071 (0.111) 0.294*** (0.094) 0.125 (0.104) 0.290*** (0.092)
Institutional trust 0.073 (0.099) 0.128 (0.091) 0.098 (0.088) 0.112 (0.091)
Interpersonal trust 0.739*** (0.123) 0.513*** (0.103) 0.703*** (0.113) 0.500*** (0.103)
Biophysical conditions Yes Yes Yes Yes
Community attributes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Rules in use Yes Yes Yes Yes
Other attributes of participant Yes Yes Yes Yes
ρ 0.000(fixed) 0.813*** (0.077)
Log-likelihood −400.407 −350.969
AIC 882.813 783.938
BIC 1046.871 947.996
Observations 404 404

Notes: figures in parentheses are clustered standard errors of estimates; ** and *** indicate statistical significance at the 5% and 1% levels, respectively; AIC denotes
Akaike's information criterion, and BIC denotes Bayesian information criteria; to save the space, this table does not report the estimation results of other independent
variables, and the cut points in ordered probit model, as well as the constants in probit model.

norms on household waste recycling (Abbott et al., 2013; Viscusi et al.,
2011) and on compliance with waste management policies (Jones et al.,
2011).
The impact of institutional trust is positive but insignificantly at the
10% level. This result roughly supports the work of Nenadovic and
Epstein (2016), who found that fishers’ trust in those government
agencies responsible for fisheries management has no immediate im-
pact on the likelihood of participation in surveillance activities. The
different influence of institutional trust on voluntary monitoring and
waste separation behavior at source is also noteworthy. While trusting
local authorities are competent to effectively treat sorted waste is an
important driving force behind waste source separation (Nguyen et al.,
2015; Loan et al., 2017), trusting in local government capacities con-
cerning monitoring and rule enforcement inhibits households’ volun-
tary monitoring. This discrepancy in results might be attributed to the
following reasons. People with higher levels of institutional trust gen-
erally believe that local waste management officials have the ability to
handle the waste pollution problem and consider that they do not need
to participate in waste disposal supervision activities. However, as for
people with lower levels of institutional trust, they regard waste dis-
posal surveillance as the responsibility of local government or neigh-
borhood committee and therefore are reluctant to perform supervision
activities. To sum up, both people with higher levels of institutional
trust and those with lower levels of institutional trust are unwilling to
participate in supervision activities.
Interpersonal trust significantly enhances respondents’ willingness
to monitor waste disposal and the likelihood of actual participation in
surveillance activities at the 1% level. This result seems to counter-
intuitive since individual with higher levels of social trust towards other
members tends to supervise less (Langfred, 2004). Whereas inter-
personal trust is a relational trust based on mutual interaction. In strong
interpersonal relationships, people would believe that other party will
not harm their own interests in spite of uncertainty and opportunities
for defection and selfish behavior (Rus and Iglič, 2005). This inter-
personal trust is similar to the words describing one’s moral characters
such as “reliable”, “honest” and “rest assured” commonly used in our
daily life (Yang, 1999) and does not necessarily mean trusting in waste
disposal of other people. In fact, respondents with a reliable relational
trust acquire understanding and support from their peers more easily
when they conduct waste disposal monitoring. Therefore, interpersonal
trust indeed boosts respondents’ willingness to monitor waste disposal
and the likelihood of implementing waste disposal monitoring as op-
posed to reducing them.
4.3.2. Endogeneity problem of social capital
In IAD framework, biophysical conditions, community attributes,
and application rules are external variables, which are less likely to
have endogenous problem in household decisions on waste disposal
supervision. As for attributes of participant, social capital might be
faced with an endogeneity problem. Two potential sources of en-
dogeneity may lead to estimation bias in establishing a causal impact of
social capital on waste disposal monitoring, namely, simultaneity (re-
verse causality) and omitted variable bias (Durlauf and Fafchamps,
2005; Han et al., 2016). There might be a simultaneous relationship
between social capital and waste disposal surveillance activities since
the process of surveillance can strengthen social networks, reinforce
norms of reciprocity, build trust, and possibly encourage participation
in other civic organizations. Meanwhile, the problem of omitted vari-
able bias may also arise because the decisions on cultivating social
capital and engaging in waste disposal surveillance activities may be
related to unobserved characteristics such as individual disposition and
community attachment. In order to eliminate the potential endogeneity
of social capital derived from simultaneous effects and omitted vari-
able, we estimate the original model separately with two groups of
instrumental variables for social capital.
First, we select respondent’s residency length within the community
and whether respondent is the original inhabitant or not as the in-
strumental variables of social capital. The reason to choose this group of
instrumental variables is that length of residency and original in-
habitant have a massive impact on the investment of social capital
(Barnes-Mauthe et al., 2015; Kesler and Bloemraad, 2010) while these
two variables are not immediately associated with decisions on parti-
cipating in waste disposal surveillance activities. In order to verify that
instrument variables have no direct effect on respondent’s decisions
upon waste disposal supervision, we adds residency length and original
inhabitant into preceding models as control variables and find that their
coefficients are not significant at the conventional significance levels.
Table 7 reports the estimation results using residency length and ori-
ginal inhabitant as instrumental variables for social capital.
One can see that the coefficients of residency length and original
inhabitant in social capital equation are significant at the 1% level,
indicating the selection of instrumental variables is reasonable.
Meanwhile, the estimation results of endogenous auxiliary parameters
(atanhrho_13, namely the correlation coefficient of disturbance terms
between Eqs. (1) and (3); and atanhrho_23, namely the correlation
coefficient of disturbance terms between Eqs. (2) and (3)) are sig-
nificant at the 5% level, and the null hypothesis that social capital is
exogenous variable is thus rejected in both willingness to monitor and
actual monitoring behavior equations. Therefore, employing the above-

55
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59

Table 7
Joint estimation of using residency length and original inhabitant as instrumental variables.
Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior Social capital

*** ***
Social capital 1.145 (0.294) 1.284 (0.213)
Residency length 0.020*** (0.005)
Original inhabitant 0.242*** (0.087)
Biophysical conditions Yes Yes Yes
Community attributes Yes Yes Yes
Rules in use Yes Yes Yes
Other attributes of participant Yes Yes Yes
ρ 0.751*** (0.076)
atanhrho_13 −0.397** (0.193)
atanhrho_23 −0.375** (0.183)
Log-likelihood −807.466
Prob > chi2 0.000
Observations 404

Notes: figures in parentheses are clustered standard errors of estimates; ** and *** indicate statistical significance at the 5% and 1% levels, respectively; to save the
space, this table does not report the estimation results of other independent variables, and the cut points in ordered probit model, as well as the constants in probit
model.

mentioned instrumental variables to estimate the impact of social ca-
pital on household waste disposal monitoring decisions is necessary and
appropriate. The result of instrumental variable specification still sup-
ports our previous results that social capital plays a prominent role in
facilitating respondent participation in waste disposal supervision.
Second, we select average social capital stock of peers in the same
community as the instrumental variable for social capital of the re-
spondent. The choice of this instrumental variable is mainly out of the
following considerations. First, social capital has obvious externalities
and social capital of peers in the same community will have a profound
impact on social capital of the respondent (Durlauf and Fafchamps,
2005), while social capital of peers in the same community has no di-
rect impact on respondent’s decision-making in waste disposal mon-
itoring. Next, similar to this method, in order to solve the endogenous
problem of individual decision-making, some previous studies have
used the mean value of other people in the same community as the
instrumental variable. For example, Gao and Lu (2010) used average
social trust of other households in the same community as the instru-
mental variable for social trust of the interviewed household when they
examined the impact of social trust on labor mobility. In the study of
the impact of financial knowledge on family business decision-making,
Yun et al. (2015) used average financial knowledge of other people in
the same income stratum in the same community as the instrumental
variable for financial knowledge of the surveyed family. Their empirical
results have uniformly shown the validity of the instrumental variables.
Table 8 displays the estimation results using the corresponding instru-
mental variable.
As shown in Table 8, average social capital of peers in the same
community has a significant positive effect on social capital of the re-
spondent, manifesting the instrumental variable is reasonably selected.
In addition, the endogenous auxiliary parameters reject the null hy-
pothesis that social capital is exogenous variable in both willingness to
monitor and actual monitoring behavior equations at the 5% level. This
results are compelling evidence that social capital indeed matters in
respondent’s decisions on waste disposal supervision.
5. Further discussion on household waste disposal monitoring
In this section, in order to further explore underlying factors influ-
encing households' decisions on waste disposal monitoring, we provide
primary reasons for respondent implementing monitoring or not im-
plementing monitoring. The detailed statistical results are shown in
Fig. 3. From Fig. 3 (a), among respondents who did not implemented
waste disposal supervision, the largest number of respondents (57.2%)
argued that waste disposal monitoring was the responsibility of sani-
tation cadres and has nothing to do with them. This phenomenon
echoes our above-mentioned findings that staffing community with full-
time cadres for sanitation management reduces respondent’s will-
ingness to supervise waste disposal and the possibility of conducting
waste disposal supervision. Meanwhile, 53.5% of respondents con-
sidered that they had few social contacts with their neighbors, and it
was difficult to monitor neighbors’ waste disposal behaviors, which also
coincide exactly with our previous findings that the lower the stock of
social capital, the less likely the respondent participate in surveillance
activities of waste disposal. However, it is also worth mentioning that
nearly a quarter (25.8%) of respondents maintained that in order to

Table 8
Joint estimation of using average social capital of peers as instrumental variable.
Willingness to monitor Actual monitoring behavior Social capital

*** ***
Social capital 1.230 (0.183) 1.232 (0.166)
Social capital of peers 0.868*** (0.110)
Biophysical conditions Yes Yes Yes
Community attributes Yes Yes Yes
Rules in use Yes Yes Yes
Other attributes of participant Yes Yes Yes
ρ 0.764*** (0.069)
atanhrho_13 −0.407**(0.202)
atanhrho_23 −0.383**(0.191)
Log-likelihood −798.682
Prob > chi2 0.000
Observations 404

Notes: figures in parentheses are clustered standard errors of estimates; ** and *** indicate statistical significance at the 5% and 1% levels, respectively; to save the
space, this table does not report the estimation results of other independent variables, and the cut points in ordered probit model, as well as the constants in probit
model.

56
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
Fig. 3. Respondents’ reasons for not monitored or monitored.
keep neighborhood relationship harmonious, it is inadvisable to su-
pervise others’ waste disposal behaviors, indicating that higher levels of
social capital may also lead to a small part of respondents are reluctant
to implement waste disposal supervision. This is similar to the results of
Bodin and Crona (2008). They found that, for averting off ;ender em-
barrassment and themselves risking social rejection, villagers had low
willingness to monitor and report rule breaking of other fishermen in
the village with relatively high levels of social capital.
In addition, Fig. 3(b) shows that among respondents who have su-
pervised waste disposal of others, 84.1% of respondents considered that
participation in environmental governance affairs was the right and
duty of each resident, and 83.7% of respondents maintained that fa-
vorable sanitary condition was publicly owned and individuals has no
right to destroy it, respectively. This to some extent demonstrates that
respondents living in communities with good economic conditions and
high degrees of modernization have an increasing demand for higher
environmental quality, and thus have a strong desire to engage in en-
vironmental governance. On the other hand, 41.2% of respondents
thought they had extensive social interactions with their neighbors and
were easy to supervise waste disposal behaviors of each other, and
27.8% of respondents indicated that they were living here since they
were born and had a strong feeling of attachment to local community.
This confirms the view of previous literature that social capital can not
only reduce the cost of conducting waste disposal supervision, but also
might reshape individual preferences over surveillance activities
through enhancing inhabitants’ community identity (Bowles and Gintis,
2002; Durlauf and Fafchamps, 2005; Passy and Giugni, 2000).
6. Conclusions
As a concrete form of public participation in environmental gov-
ernance, autonomous supervision of local inhabitants can effectively
increase the total supply of supervision for environmental governance,
and thus help to alleviate pressure on increasing severe environmental
pollution. This paper empirically assesses the potential drivers and re-
straining factors of household waste disposal supervision under IAD
framework. In particular, we mainly examines the effect of social ca-
pital as well as external variables on household participation in waste
disposal surveillance activities. Using household and community level
survey data from four suburbs in China, our estimation results reveal
that willingness to monitor and actual monitoring behavior of house-
holds are not immediately associated with biophysical conditions while
57
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
community attributes and participant attributes are important factors in
explaining household participation in waste disposal supervision.
Specifically, population density and modernization of community, and
being male significantly increase the likelihood of households super-
vising waste disposal while community size and heterogeneity suppress
it.
More importantly, this study also finds that staffing community with
full-time sanitation cadres undermines households’ enthusiasm to con-
duct waste disposal supervision, but social capital and peer monitoring
substantially increase the willingness to supervise waste disposal and
the possibility of household conducting waste disposal supervision.
Lastly, household income, social norms and householder age are pri-
mary predictors of the gap between hypothetical willingness to monitor
and actual monitoring behavior. Several policy implications are drawn
from the above conclusions.
First, local governments should actively improve community infra-
structure construction and the whole household income. According to
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, only after basic needs of life (demand for
food, water, energy, socializing and others) have been satisfied, will
higher needs for good environmental quality be aroused. Second, local
governments should decentralize and empower community inhabitants
with a certain degree of autonomy, reduce the excessive dependence of
administrative intervention, and consequently achieve inhabitant self-
determined participation in environmental governance. Finally,
strengthening social capital cultivation is an important approach to
stimulate individuals to engage in surveillance activities spontaneously.
Social capital can not only provide inhabitants with regular commu-
nication opportunity and reduce transaction costs in the process of
environmental governance, but also subtly reshape the preferences of
inhabitants towards community environment management.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
We thank Hongyun Han for her helpful suggestions, and appreciate
the help provided by Hanning Li, Sheng Xia, Ye Jiang, Shuang Lin, and
Shu Wu in our data collection. We also acknowledge the financial
support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant
No. 71803175; 71773114).
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
References
Abbott, A., Nandeibam, S., O’Shea, L., 2013. Recycling: social norms and warm-glow
revisited. Ecol. Econ. 90, 10–18.
Adams, W.M., Brockington, D., Dyson, J., Vira, B., 2003. Managing tragedies: under-
standing conflict over common pool resources. Science 302 (5652), 1915–1916.
Adger, W.N., 2003. Social capital, collective action, and adaptation to climate change.
Econ. Geogr. 79 (4), 387–404.
Agamuthu, P., Fauziah, S.H., 2011. Challenges and issues in moving towards sustainable
landfilling in a transitory country - Malaysia. Waste Manage. Res. 29 (1), 13–19.
Agrawal, A., 2001. Common property institutions and sustainable governance of re-
sources. World Dev. 29 (10), 1649–1672.
Ahlerup, P., Olsson, O., Yanagizawa, D., 2009. Social capital vs institutions in the growth
process. Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 25 (1), 1–14.
Anderies, J.M., Janssen, M.A., Ostrom, E., 2004. A framework to analyze the robustness of
social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective. Ecol. Soc. 9 (1), 18.
Anderson, B.A., Romani, J.H., Phillips, H., Wentzel, M., Tlabela, K., 2007. Exploring
environmental perceptions, behaviors and awareness: water and water pollution in
South Africa. Popul. Environ. 28 (3), 133–161.
Andersson, K., 2006. Understanding decentralized forest governance: an application of
the institutional analysis and development framework. Sustain. Sci. Pract. Policy 2
(1), 25–35.
Araral, E., 2009. What explains collective action in the commons? Theory and evidence
from the Philippines. World Dev. 37 (3), 687–697.
Azizi Khalkheili, T., Zamani, G.H., 2009. Farmer participation in irrigation management:
the case of Doroodzan dam irrigation network. Iran. Agr. Water Manage. 96 (5),
859–865.
Baland, J., Platteau, J., 1996. Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role
for Rural Communities? Clarendon Press, Oxford, England.
Baliamoune-Lutz, M., 2011. Trust-based social capital, institutions, and development. J.
Socio-Econ. 40 (4), 335–346.
Baral, N., Heinen, J.T., 2007. Resources use, conservation attitudes, management inter-
vention and park-people relations in the Western Terai landscape of Nepal. Environ.
Conserv. 34 (01), 64.
Barnes-Mauthe, M., Gray, S.A., Arita, S., Lynham, J., Leung, P., 2015. What determines
social capital in a social–ecological system? Insights from a network perspective.
Environ. Manage. 55 (2), 392–410.
Behera, B., 2009. Explaining the performance of state-community joint forest manage-
ment in India. Ecol. Econ. 69 (1), 177–185.
Bodin, Ö., Crona, B.I., 2008. Management of natural resources at the community level:
exploring the role of social capital and leadership in a rural fishing community. World
Dev. 36 (12), 2763–2779.
Bowles, S., Gintis, H., 2002. Social capital and community governance. Econ. J. 112
(483), F419–F436.
Boyd, R., Mathew, S., 2007. A narrow road to cooperation. Science 316 (5833),
1858–1859.
Brondizio, E.S., Ostrom, E., Young, O.R., 2009. Connectivity and the governance of
multilevel social-ecological systems: the role of social capital. Annu. Rev. Environ.
Resour. 34, 253–278.
Cai, H., He, X., 2014. Community heterogeneity and cohesion in urban: evidence from
neighborhoods relationships. J. Sun Yat-Sen Univ. (Social Science Edition) 54 (2),
133–151.
Calfucura, E., 2018. Governance, land and distribution: a discussion on the political
economy of community-based conservation. Ecol. Econ. 145, 18–26.
Cameron, A.C., Gelbach, J.B., Miller, D.L., 2011. Robust inference with multiway clus-
tering. J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 29 (2), 238–249.
Clarke, P., 2008. When can group level clustering be ignored? Multilevel models versus
single-level models with sparse data. J. Epidemiol. Commun. Health 62 (8), 752–758.
Coleman, E.A., 2009. Institutional factors affecting biophysical outcomes in forest man-
agement. J. Policy Anal. Manage. 28 (1), 122–146.
Coleman, E.A., Steed, B.C., 2009. Monitoring and sanctioning in the commons: an ap-
plication to forestry. Ecol. Econ. 68 (7), 2106–2113.
Collier, P., 2002. Social capital and poverty: a microeconomic perspective. In: Grootaert,
C., Van Bastelaer, T. (Eds.), The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical
Assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 19–41.
Conroy, C., Mishra, A., Rai, A., 2002. Learning from self-initiated community forest
management in Orissa, India. For. Policy Econ. 4 (3), 227–237.
Coulibaly-Lingani, P., Savadogo, P., Tigabu, M., Oden, P., 2011. Factors influencing
people’s participation in the forest management program in Burkina Faso, West
Africa. For. Policy Econ. 13 (4), 292–302.
D’Silva, E., Pai, S., 2003. Social capital and collective action: development outcomes in
forest protection and watershed development. Econ. Polit. Week. 38 (14),
1404–1415.
Daniele, G., Geys, B., 2015. Interpersonal trust and welfare state support. Eur. J. Polit.
Econ. 39, 1–12.
Dekker, K., 2007. Social capital, neighbourhood attachment and participation in dis-
tressed urban areas. A case study in the Hague and Utrecht, the Netherlands. Hous.
Stud. 22 (3), 355–379.
Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., Stern, P.C., 2003. The struggle to govern the commons. Science 302
(5652), 1907–1912.
Dinar, S., 2009. Scarcity and cooperation along international rivers. Glob. Environ. Polit.
9 (1), 109–135.
Dolisca, F., Carter, D.R., McDaniel, J.M., Shannon, D.A., Jolly, C.M., 2006. Factors in-
fluencing farmers’ participation in forestry management programs: a case study from
Haiti. For. Ecol. Manag. 236 (2-3), 324–331.
58
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
Durlauf, S.N., Fafchamps, M., 2005. Social capital. In: Agion, P., Durlauf, S.N. (Eds.),
Handbook of Economic Growth. North Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 1641–1699.
Fehr, E., Gächter, S., 2000. Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments.
Am. Econ. Rev. 90 (4), 980–994.
Frey, B.S., Meier, S., 2004. Social comparisons and pro-social behavior: testing "condi-
tional cooperation" in a field experiment. Am. Econ. Rev. 94 (5), 1717–1722.
Frey, U.J., Villamayor-Tomas, S., Theesfeld, I., 2016. A continuum of governance regimes:
a new perspective on co-management in irrigation systems. Environ. Sci. Policy 66,
73–81.
Fujiie, M., Hayami, Y., Kikuchi, M., 2005. The conditions of collective action for local
commons management: the case of irrigation in the Philippines. Agric. Econ. 33 (2),
179–189.
Gao, H., Lu, M., 2010. The influence of social trust on labor mobility and its regional
differences in China. Chin. Rural Econ. 03, 12–24 (in Chinese).
Gibson, C.C., Williams, J.T., Ostrom, E., 2005. Local enforcement and better forests.
World Dev. 33 (2), 273–284.
Górriz-Mifsud, E., Secco, L., Pisani, E., 2016. Exploring the interlinkages between gov-
ernance and social capital: a dynamic model for forestry. For. Policy Econ. 65, 25–36.
Grafton, R.Q., 2005. Social capital and fisheries governance. Ocean Coast. Manage. 48 (9-
10), 753–766.
Graham-Rowe, E., Jessop, D.C., Sparks, P., 2015. Predicting household food waste re-
duction using an extended theory of planned behaviour. Resour. Conserv. Recycl.
101, 194–202.
Greene, W.H., 2012. Econometric Analysis. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Griskevicius, V., Goldstein, N.J., Mortensen, C.R., Cialdini, R.B., Kenrick, D.T., 2006.
Going along versus going alone: when fundamental motives facilitate strategic (non)
conformity. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 91 (2), 281–294.
Grootaert, C., Narayan, D., Jones, V.N., Woolcock, M., 2004. Measuring Social Capital: an
Integrated Questionnaire. World Bank, Washington, DC.
Gutiérrez, N.L., Hilborn, R., Defeo, O., 2011. Leadership, social capital and incentives
promote successful fisheries. Nature 470 (7334), 386–389.
Halkos, G.E., Jones, N., 2012. Modeling the effect of social factors on improving biodi-
versity protection. Ecol. Econ. 78, 90–99.
Han, H., Zhang, Z., Peng, W., 2016. An analysis of the influence mechanism of social
capital on households’ waste separation. J. Zhejiang Univ. (Hum. Soc. Sci.) 46 (03),
164–179 (in Chinese).
Hayes, T., Murtinho, F., Wolff, H., 2017. The impact of payments for environmental
services on communal lands: an analysis of the factors driving household land-use
behavior in Ecuador. World Dev. 93, 427–446.
He, K., Zhang, J., Zhang, L., Wu, X., 2015. Interpersonal trust, institutional trust and
farmers’ willingness to participate in environmental governance: take agricultural
waste as an example. Manage. World 05, 75–88 (in Chinese).
Heckathorn, D.D., 1989. Collective action and the second-order free-rider problem.
Ration. Soc. 1 (1), 78–100.
Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., et al., 2006.
Costly punishment across human societies. Science 312 (5781), 1767–1770.
Hox, J., 1998. Multilevel modeling: when and why. In: Balderjahn, I., Mathar, R.,
Schader, M. (Eds.), Classification, Data Analysis, and Data Highways. Springer,
Heidelberg, Berlin, pp. 147–154.
Huang, Q., Rozelle, S., Wang, J., Huang, J., 2009. Water management institutional re-
form: a representative look at northern China. Agric. Water Manage. 96 (2), 215–225.
Imam, A., Mohammed, B., Wilson, D.C., Cheeseman, C.R., 2008. Solid waste management
in Abuja. Nigeria. Waste Manage. 28 (2), 468–472.
Imperial, M.T., Yandle, T., 2005. Taking institutions seriously: using the IAD framework
to analyze fisheries policy. Soc. Nat. Resour. 18 (6), 493–509.
Ito, J., 2012. Collective action for local commons management in rural Yunnan, China:
empirical evidence and hypotheses using evolutionary game theory. Land Econ. 88
(1), 181–200.
Jaramillo, C., Ochoa, D., Contreras, L., Pagani, M., Carvajal-Ortiz, H., Pratt, L.M., et al.,
2010. Effects of rapid global warming at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary on neo-
tropical vegetation. Science 330 (6006), 957–961.
Jones, N., Evangelinos, K., Halvadakis, C.P., Iosifides, T., Sophoulis, C.M., 2010. Social
factors influencing perceptions and willingness to pay for a market-based policy
aiming on solid waste management. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 54 (9), 533–540.
Jones, N., Halvadakis, C.P., Sophoulis, C.M., 2011. Social capital and household solid
waste management policies: a case study in Mytilene. Greece. Environ. Polit. 20 (2),
264–283.
Joseph, K., 2006. Stakeholder participation for sustainable waste management. Habitat
Int. 30 (4), 863–871.
Keene, A., Deller, S.C., 2015. Evidence of the environmental Kuznets’ curve among US
counties and the impact of social capital. Int. Reg. Sci. Rev. 38 (4), 358–387.
Kesler, C., Bloemraad, I., 2010. Does immigration erode social capital? The conditional
effects of immigration-generated diversity on trust, membership, and participation
across 19 countries, 1981–2000. Can. J. Polit. Sci. 43 (02), 319–347.
Krishna, A., Uphoff, N., 2002. Mapping and measuring social capital through assessment
of collective action to conserve and develop watersheds in Rajasthan, India. In:
Grootaert, C., Van Bastelaer, T. (Eds.), The Role of Social Capital in Development: An
Empirical Assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 85–124.
Langfred, C.W., 2004. Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and in-
dividual autonomy in self-managing teams. Acad. Manage. J. 47 (3), 385–399.
Larson, L.R., Whiting, J.W., Green, G.T., 2011. Exploring the influence of outdoor re-
creation participation on pro-environmental behaviour in a demographically diverse
population. Local Environ. 16 (1), 67–86.
Lejano, R., Ingram, H., 2007. Place-based conservation: lessons from the Turtle Islands.
Environment 49 (9), 18–27.
Liu, N., Anne, D.B., 2015. Household income changes, time use between husband and
Z. Zhang, L. Zhao
wife and gender equality. J. World Econ. 11, 117–143 (in Chinese).
Loan, L.T.T., Nomura, H., Takahashi, Y., Yabe, M., 2017. Psychological driving forces
behind households’ behaviors toward municipal organic waste separation at source in
Vietnam: a structural equation modeling approach. J. Mater. Cycles Waste Manage.
19 (3), 1052–1060.
Luintel, H., Bluffstone, R.A., Scheller, R.M., 2018. An assessment of collective action
drivers of carbon storage in Nepalese forest commons. For. Policy Econ. 90, 39–47.
McGinnis, M.D., 2011. An introduction to IAD and the language of the Ostrom workshop:
a simple guide to a complex framework. Policy Stud. J. 39 (1), 169–183.
Mushtaq, S., Dawe, D., Lin, H., Moya, P., 2007. An assessment of collective action for
pond management in Zhanghe irrigation system (ZIS). China. Agric. Syst. 92 (1-3),
140–156.
Naidu, S.C., 2009. Heterogeneity and collective management: evidence from common
forests in Himachal Pradesh, India. World Dev. 37 (3), 676–686.
Nenadovic, M., Epstein, G., 2016. The relationship of social capital and fishers’ partici-
pation in multi-level governance arrangements. Environ. Sci. Policy 61, 77–86.
Nguyen, T.T.P., Zhu, D., Le, N.P., 2015. Factors influencing waste separation intention of
residential households in a developing country: evidence from Hanoi, Vietnam.
Habitat Int. 48, 169–176.
Nigussie, Z., Tsunekawa, A., Haregeweyn, N., Adgo, E., Cochrane, L., Floquet, A., et al.,
2018. Applying Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development framework to soil
and water conservation activities in north-western Ethiopia. Land Use Policy 71,
1–10.
Oliver, P.E., Marwell, G., 1988. The paradox of group size in collective action: a theory of
the critical mass. II. Am. Sociol. Rev. 53 (1), 1–8.
Oliver, P., Marwell, G., Teixeira, R., 1985. A theory of the critical mass. I.
Interdependence, group heterogeneity, and the production of collective action. Am. J.
Sociol. 91 (3), 522–556.
Olson, M., 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
Ostrom, E., 1990. Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Ostrom, E., 1998. A behavioral approach to the rational choice theory of collective action.
Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 92 (01), 1–22.
Ostrom, E., 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ.
Ostrom, E., 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological
systems. Science 325 (5939), 419–422.
Ostrom, E., 2010. Beyond markets and States: polycentric governance of complex eco-
nomic systems. Am. Econ. Rev. 100 (3), 641–672.
Pagdee, A., Kim, Y., Daugherty, P.J., 2006. What makes community forest management
successful: a meta-study from community forests throughout the world. Soc. Nat.
Resour. 19 (1), 33–52.
Pan, Y., Dai, Y., Wu, C., Liu, J., 2009. Social capital, political connections and corporate
investment decision. Econ. Res. J. 11, 82–94 (in Chinese).
Panchanathan, K., Boyd, R., 2004. Indirect reciprocity can stabilize cooperation without
the second-order free rider problem. Nature 432 (7016), 499–502.
Passy, F., Giugni, M., 2000. Life-spheres, networks, and sustained participation in social
movements: a phenomenological approach to political commitment. Sociol. Forum
15 (1), 117–144.
Passy, F., Monsch, G., 2014. Do social networks really matter in contentious politics? Soc.
Mov. Stud. 13 (1), 22–47.
Paudel, K.P., Schafer, M.J., 2009. The environmental Kuznets curve under a new fra-
mework: the role of social capital in water pollution. Environ. Resour. Econ. 42 (2),
265–278.
Poteete, A.R., Ostrom, E., 2004. Heterogeneity, group size and collective action: the role
of institutions in forest management. Dev. Change 35 (3), 435–461.
Pretty, J., 2003. Social capital and the collective management of resources. Science 302
59
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 143 (2019) 45–59
(5652), 1912–1914.
Pretty, J., Ward, H., 2001. Social capital and the environment. World Dev. 29 (2),
209–227.
Putnam, R.D., Leonardi, R., Nanetti, R.Y., 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Raheem, N., 2014. Using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to
analyze the acequias of El Río de las Gallinas, New Mexico. Soc. Sci. J. 51 (3),
447–454.
Rahman, H.M.T., Hickey, G.M., Sarker, S.K., 2012. A framework for evaluating collective
action and informal institutional dynamics under a resource management policy of
decentralization. Ecol. Econ. 83, 32–41.
Reimer, A.P., Prokopy, L.S., 2014. Farmer participation in US Farm Bill conservation
programs. Environ. Manage. 53 (2), 318–332.
Rojas, M.L., Recalde, M.Y., London, S., Perillo, G.M.E., Zilio, M.I., Piccolo, M.C., 2014.
Behind the increasing erosion problem: the role of local institutions and social capital
on coastal management in Argentina. Ocean Coast. Manage. 93, 76–87.
Röttgers, D., 2016. Conditional cooperation, context and why strong rules work — a
Namibian common-pool resource experiment. Ecol. Econ. 129, 21–31.
Rus, A., Iglič, H., 2005. Trust, governance and performance: the role of institutional and
interpersonal trust in SME development. Int. Sociol. 20 (3), 371–391.
Russell, S.V., Young, C.W., Unsworth, K.L., Robinson, C., 2017. Bringing habits and
emotions into food waste behaviour. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 125, 107–114.
Ruttan, L.M., Mulder, M.B., 1999. Are East African pastoralists truly conservationists?
Curr. Anthropol. 40 (5), 621–652.
Šedová, B., 2016. On causes of illegal waste dumping in Slovakia. J. Environ. Plan.
Manage. 59 (7), 1277–1303.
Sefton, M., Shupp, R., Walker, J.M., 2007. The effect of rewards and sanctions in provi-
sion of public goods. Econ. Inq. 45 (4), 671–690.
Shi, X., He, F., 2012. The environmental pollution perception of residents in coal mining
areas: a case study in the Hancheng Mine Area, Shaanxi Province, China. Environ.
Manage. 50 (4), 505–513.
Smith, E.A., 2010. Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of
human cooperation. Evol. Hum. Behav. 31 (4), 231–245.
Szolnoki, A., Perc, M., 2011. Group-size effects on the evolution of cooperation in the
spatial public goods game. Phys. Rev. E 84 (4), 47102.
Ternstrom, I., 2003. The Management of Common Pool Resources: Theoretical Essays and
Empirical Evidence. The Economic Research Institute of the Stockholm, School of
Economics, Stockholm.
Thomson, A.M., Perry, J.L., 2006. Collaboration processes: inside the black box. Public
Adm. Rev. 66, 20–32.
Velez, M.A., Stranlund, J.K., Murphy, J.J., 2009. What motivates common pool resource
users? Experimental evidence from the field. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 70 (3), 485–497.
Viscusi, W.K., Huber, J., Bell, J., 2011. Promoting recycling: private values, social norms,
and economic incentives. Am. Econ. Rev. 101 (3), 65–70.
Wang, X., Otto, I.M., Yu, L., 2013. How physical and social factors affect village-level
irrigation: an institutional analysis of water governance in northern China. Agric.
Water Manage. 119, 10–18.
Wang, Y., Chen, C., Araral, E., 2016. The effects of migration on collective action in the
commons: evidence from rural China. World Dev. 88, 79–93.
Wei, Q., Jiang, S., 2013. How is social cooperative order possible: exploring mysteries.
Econ. Res. J. 11, 140–151 (in Chinese).
Yang, Y., 1999. One of us: a case study of trust construction process. Sociol. Stud. 2,
38–52 (in Chinese).
Yun, Z., Song, Q., Wu, Y., Peng, C., 2015. Financial knowledge, entrepreneurial decision
making and entrepreneurial motivation. Manage. World 1, 87–98 (in Chinese).
Zhou, Q., 2013. Decentralized irrigation in China: an institutional analysis. Policy Soc. 32
(1), 77–88.