Household solid waste management behaviour in Antalya

As in many developing countries increase in welfare, urbanization and population boom has triggered the waste generation in Turkey. Most of these wastes are still disposed through inappropriate ways such as landfilling and storage. The share of recycling is relatively low when compared to developed countries. When considered its benefits, non – recycled wastes lead to enormous amount of welfare losses in the country. Furthermore, maintaining the usage of non – recycled raw materials as production inputs increases the pressure on the environment and thus speeds up environmental degradation. This thesis work aims to measure willingness to accept compensation for participating a hypotetical recycling program in three central districts of Antalya, namely Kepez, Konyaaltı and Muratpaşa municipalities. The main motivation of the study comes from the "Çevreci Komşu Kart Projesi" started by Muratpaşa Municipality. For this purpose, two revealed preferences methods, Contingent Valuation and Discrete Choice Experiments have been implemented. These methods allow to calculate a change in terms of monetary value for a non – market good such as waste management services. General willingness to participate in the household waste recycling program was calculated from the findings obtained from the estimation of the Probit regression defined on the basis of the Contingent Valuation Method. The Choice Experiment Model was estimated with the Mixed Logit regression and the willingness to accept was calculated for the features that make up the waste recycling program. In addition, it has been empirically determined that household recycling behavior is also affected by a number of socio-economic variables. In the light of the empirical results, policies have been proposed to increase the participation of households in different socioeconomic groups in solid waste recycling programs. Keywords: Household Waste Management, Recycling, Sustainability, Circular Economy, Willingness to Accept, Contingent Valuation, Discrete Choice Experiments