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Recycling Efficiencies in Japan’s Administrative Regions: Findings from Network Data Envelopment Analysis

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Abstract

Recycling is an essential part of circular economy. This research constructs a two-stage waste generation and recycling activity model, selecting Japan as a case study object to explore its recycling efficiencies through this model. Japan’s regional recycling efficiency is assessed in two stages: waste collection as stage 1 and the treatment and process of the recycling waste as stage 2. We adopt a network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model by Tone and Tsutsui (2009) to measure the recycling efficiencies of 47 administrative regions in Japan, taking in account multiple inputs and outputs from 2013 to 2017. The empirical results indicate that the efficiency of stage one (waste collection) performs worse than that of stage two (treatment and process of recyclables). The metropolitan regions consistently outperform the rural regions, because the metropolitan regions perform better in stage one (waste collection). Local governments should improve the waste collection by co-working with local communities and volunteer groups. All regions perform relatively more efficiently in stage 2 (waste processing).

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Notes

  1. The classification here is for convenience only. Rural municipalities exist even in large metropolitan areas.

  2. Although Honma and Hu [23] also evaluate efficiency for recycling, their data is municipality-level. Hence, we compare our results with Ichinose et al. [14].

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Acknowledgements

We thank an editor and two anonymous referees of this journal, seminar participants at annual meetings of the Taiwan Economic Association and Asian Association of Environmental and Resource Economics for their valuable comments.

Funding

The first two authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST108-2410-H-009–039) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant Number 19K01659, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Business and Management, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, 118, Sec. 1, Chung-Hsiao W. Rd., Taipei City, 10044, Taiwan

    **-Li Hu & Tzu-Min Chang

  2. School of Political Science and Economics, Tokai University, Kanagawa, Japan

    Satoshi Honma

Authors
  1. **-Li Hu
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Contributions

Conceptualization, J.L.H. and S.H.; methodology, J.L.H.; software, J.L.H. and T.M.C.; validation, J.L.H. and S.H.; formal analysis, J.L.H, S.H., and T.M.C.; investigation, T.M.C. and M.Y.C.; resources, J.L.H.; data curation, T.M.C.; writing—original draft preparation, T.M.C.; writing—review and editing, J.L.H. and S.H.; visualization, S.H. and T.M.C.; supervision, J-L.H. and S.H.; and project administration, J.L.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to **-Li Hu.

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Hu, JL., Honma, S. & Chang, TM. Recycling Efficiencies in Japan’s Administrative Regions: Findings from Network Data Envelopment Analysis. Circ.Econ.Sust. 4, 1–21 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-023-00274-1

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