Determinants of urban solid waste production

Abstract

In this paper the economic and social determinants of solid waste production in Turkey are investigated. For this purpose, the econometrics models are estimated by using the cross sectional data in 2001 of 81 provinces from Turkish Statistical Institute Databank. The dependent variable in the models is average amount of solid waste discharged annually per capita. Independent variables are gross domestic product per capita, population, average size of households, rate of children aged 0-4, population density, rate of graduated :from university and median age. According to the estimation results, the effects of the population, gross domestic product per capita and average size of households on the average amount of solid waste per capita is significant. These results which are related to Turkey are agreed with the results in literature in terms of magnitudes and signs of the coefficients. However because of inadequate data, the results should be assessed providently