Path analysis of influencing factors on municipal solid waste generation: A case study of Xiamen City
城市生活垃圾产量影响因素的路径分析——以厦门市为例

The increasing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) has imposed great challenges to healthy and sustainable development of the cities. Study of the relationship between influencing factors and MSW is crucial to explore the metabolism of MSW generation and forecast its dynamic trend, which is fundamental in guiding the sustainable management and regulation of MSW. To investigate the relationship between factors and MSW generation, a case study of Xiamen city was conducted by employing path analysis based on time series data of MSW, economy, residents' living standards, urban development, socio-demographic and natural characteristics from 1979 to 2010. The results showed that the proposed path model exhibited good fit indices and could explain the causality between factors and MSW compared with simple correlation analysis. The direct effects of city size, per capita disposable income, urbanization rate and GDP were 0.58 (p<0.001), 0.55 (p<0.001), 0.52 (p<0.001), and 0.51 (p<0.001) that were all greater than 0.5, which indicated their significant positive effects. Household characteristics had a relatively significant negative direct effect (-0.40, p<0.001). GDP had a positive indirect effect (0.13, p<0.001) through tourist population, and city size had a positive indirect effect (0.31, p<0.001) through household characteristics on MSW generation. Total effects of variables were ranged as city size (0.89, p<0.001) > GDP (0.64, p<0.001) > per capita disposable income (0.55, p<0.001) > urbanization rate (0.52, p<0.001) > household characteristics (-0.40, p<0.001) > tourist population (0.19, p<0.001) > mean annual temperature (0.09, p<0.001). Tourist populaiton had weak positve effects and temperature can only influence inner-annual variation of MSW generation rather than inter-annual changes.