Abstract
Domestic waste sorting is an important link of grassroots social
governance. Drawing on the theory of multi-level governance, this paper
identifies 14 factors affecting the multi-level governance of domestic waste
sorting, and combines social network analysis (SNA) with interpretative
structural modeling (ISM) to quantify the key influencing factors, and their
correlation mechanism. The results show that: (1) To form the management system
for multi-level governance, it is necessary to nurture and construct a
framework with government governance as the basis, the social capital as the
driver, and the system self-organization as the operating mechanism. (2) The
factors affecting multi-level governance can be divided into four layers: three
factors, including regulatory support, belong to the bottom layer, and play a
key role in the formation of the driving mechanism for multi-level governance;
nine factors, including incentive measure, belong to the middle layer, and play
a transitional role in the operation of the driving mechanism; three factors,
namely, publicity and education, mutual trust, and practice of social norms,
belong to the surface layer, and directly affect the driving mechanism for the
multi-level governance of domestic waste sorting. Although the three surface
layer factors clearly depend on the factors on the other layers, they exert the
most direct impact on the construction and operation of the driving mechanism.
The analysis results shed new light on how to study the driving mechanism for
the multi-level governance of domestic waste sorting.
JEL classification numbers: Q56.
Keywords: Waste sorting; Multi-level governance; Social network
analysis (SNA); Interpretative structural modeling (ISM).