Perceived health status and environmental quality in the assessment of external cost of waste disposal facilities. An empirical investigation

The taxation for urban waste management has been reformed in Italy by the introduction of the environmental law in 2006. In the planning phase of waste management the externalities (social and environmental costs) generated by new facilities remain widely unaccounted, with a consequent distortion for prices, and the raise of local conflicts. In order to support the diffusion of cost-benefit application the paper presents a survey based on the choice modelling methodology, aimed to evaluate on a monetary scale the disamenity effect perceived by incinerator and landfills in an italian urban context: the city of Turin. The choice experiment and the survey data allowed to model in a random utility framework the behaviour of respondents, whose choices are found to be driven by the endowment of information about technological options, socio-economic characteristics as income, education, family composition, and also by their health status. We propose choice modelling surveys as a way to improve the level of information about the preferences of citizens in a bottom-up sense. Furthermore, we found empirical evidence that the behaviour in residential location choices is affected by different aspects of the respondent life and in particular by the health status. Distinct estimates of willingness to accept compensation for disamenity effects of incinerator (€2670) and landfill (€3816) are elicited through the choice modelling aaproach. The effect of health status of the respondents, their level of information about the waste disposal infrastructure, the presence of a subjective strong aversion (NIMBY) and the actual endowment and concentration of infrastructures are demonstrated to be significant factors determining the choice behaviour, but differentiated and specific for incinerators and landfills.