ABSTRACT

Estimating the preference for a better solid waste management system: A case of Siddharthanagar Municipality, Nepal

The immense pressure on cities from this emerging population creates an unfavorable condition to society and environment especially from an upward shift of household waste production. Illegal dumping beside the river and roads, shortage of municipality resources of collection, and a lack of awareness have a great negative impact on the overall ecosystem mostly incurred by water and air pollution. Siddharthanagar municipality is experiencing faster growth in population leading to a huge burden of unmanaged waste from the lack of resources by the municipality. However, with this current situation, no research has been done to understand the preference and the opinion towards waste management system by the households which is crucial to design a better waste management service. To fill this gap of information from the household level, a group of UNM researchers conducted a survey on household’s waste management behavior, preference, and willingness to pay in June 2019. This research has two main objectives. First, This research is expected to provide information on households current waste management behavior and production as well as their perspective towards engaging in better waste management techniques. Second, this will provide households willingness to pay to the municipality to develop the characteristics (dumping, recycling, composting, etc.)  of better waste management service. Overall, this will help the administrative personnel to formulate policy after accounting for the household’s preference.

Research Team Investigators and Collaborative Team: Project Team consisted of Dr. Alok K. Bohara (Professor, Department of Economics, UNM; Director, NSC), Mohammad Mashiur Rahman and Niraj Khatiwada (Doctoral students, Department of Economics, UNM). The project was funded by the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), ICIMOD through our local collaborator, Pratiman Neema Memorial Foundation (PNMF). We acknowledge the support provided by our collaborating institution PNMF and its research team (Ms. Swati Thapa, Mr. Prakash Rayamajhi, Mr. Dharma K. C., Mr. Anup Poudel, and Sharada Pathak). We would also like to express our gratitude to our field supervisor (Mr. Krishna Neupane) and enumerators.