Institutional Quality, Trust in Institutions, and Waste Recycling Performance in the EU27

This paper addresses the role of institutional quality and trust in institutions for the performance in waste recycling of the EU27 countries. While survey-based works have highlighted the role of these factors for waste recycling attitudes and performance at the micro level, econometric analyses of recycling in Europe at country and regional levels have mostly looked into the role of waste policies, and not the role of institutional factors, in driving progresses in waste recycling. This paper tries to fill this gap through a panel econometrics analysis of recycling rates of municipal solid waste at the national level for the EU27 countries for the period 2005–2020. The proxies for institutional quality and trust in institutions, as the variables of interest, are introduced into a model that includes controls on a set of socio-economic variables, and on a set of EU waste policy variables, in particular the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) and its revision, and the first Circular Economy Action Plan of 2015 (CEAP 2015). Our results support the hypothesis that the quality of institutions can influence waste recycling performance. Moreover, our results provide evidence on the negative role of institutional trust on recycling rate at country level. Similarly, we find that the EU WFD and CEAP 2015 have been significant in driving recycling performances; the latter finding, however, is a necessary condition in appropriate institutional and socio-economic environments at the national level.