Assessing a hierarchical sustainable solid waste management structure with qualitative information: Policy and regulations drive social impacts and stakeholder participation

Highlights

• This study proposes a set of attributes to access sustainable solid waste management performance in Vietnam.

• Fuzzy DEMATEL is to handle the interrelationships and ANP is to build the hierarchical structure to acquire the aspects and criteria weights.

• Sustainable solid waste management requires the leadership of politics to drive stakeholders’ participations and social impacts.

• Population growth and migration, institutional settings, waste recycling and energy recovery, households, and private contractors are critical for improvement.

Abstract

This study contributes to building a valid hierarchical sustainable solid waste management (SSWM) attribute set with qualitative information, which is a complicated and ambiguous problem with uncertainties. Few studies have provided qualitative information and have addressed the interrelationships and interdependencies among the hierarchical SSWM attributes. SSWM has recently become a difficult problem to solve due to urbanization, inequality, and economic growth. This study aims to propose an SSWM attribute set and identify a causal model through linguistic preferences by using a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory approach to simultaneously handle the uncertainty and the interrelationships. The analytic network process is used to develop the hierarchical structure to weigh the aspects and criteria. Qualitative information is transformed into crisp and comparable values to examine the causal relationships between attributes and confirm the consistency between the theoretical structure and industry phenomena. The results indicate that policy and regulations, stakeholder participation, and social impacts play essential roles in these causal interrelationships. Political leadership in SSWM is required to drive stakeholder participation and achieve social impacts. Population growth and migration, institutional settings, waste recycling and energy recovery, households, and private contractors are the main aspects involved in improving SSWM in Vietnam.

Introduction

The failures of solid waste management (SWM) have resulted in resource loss, forcing waste management authorities to adopt an approach that relies on emergency response and confirms that relying purely on technical and economic perspectives regarding waste management can lead to critical social, ethical and political problems (Galante et al., 2010). The design of the waste management system in Vietnam also suffers from these hidden problems. SWM cannot currently be considered a sustainable system because it incorporates only economic and environmental perspectives (Heidari et al., 2019). Since SWM is a complicated problem of urban expansion, inequality, economic development, sociocultural issues, political and institutional attributes, and international impacts (Marshall and Farahbakhsh, 2013), sustainable solid waste management (SSWM) is essential for all waste management stages, from design and planning to operation and discharge. Further investigation is required by both practitioners and academics to improve performance and achieve sustainability.

In the literature, SSWM attributes are assessed mainly from the perspectives of social impact, economic benefits and environmental assessment (the triple bottom line - TBL) (Diaz-Barriga-Fernandez et al., 2018; Mohammadi et al., 2019). Mirdar Harijani et al. (2017) developed SSWM capabilities to balance the TBL perspective toward sustainability. Bui et al. (2020a) proposed that SSWM assessment should be conducted by using the benefits and effects of the TBL dimensions. However, there are fundamental difficulties in addressing SSWM's conflicting substances (Heidari et al., 2019). Under the existing arrangements, uncontrolled or unsuitable SWM results in serious problems that contribute to adverse human health impacts, ecosystem destruction, biodiversity damage, environmental contamination, and negative economic and social impacts (Sisto et al., 2017). SSWM is now a rich variation that involves interesting and challenging gaps that need to be deeply examined. Edalatpour et al. (2018) and Tsai et al. (2020a) suggested that SSWM should be approached using the development of partnerships with other stakeholders to assess environmental aspects and to provide economic benefit analysis. Bui et al. (2020b) argued that there is a need for an integrated approach and explored future trends for SSWM, including national regulations and political frameworks, suitable technology, and stakeholders’ consciousness and involvement. Thus, policy and regulations, technical solutions and stakeholder participation are needed in addition to the TBL to improve the SWM process by shifting it toward sustainability.

Previous studies have presented SSWM decision-making problems in various ways. Galante et al. (2010) noted that SSWM entails a high number of decision attributes. Arıkan et al. (2017) stated that SSWM system selection requires the involvement of both qualitative and quantitative attributes. Yadav et al. (2017) claimed that SSWM is a complex issue related to the practical challenges that arise from the high level of uncertainty of SSWM attribute associations. In all SSWM situations, avoiding the uncertainty inherent in waste management will result in untrustworthy decision-making (Gambella et al., 2019). However, previous studies have neglected this gap, and it is necessary to deal with the interrelationships between the proposed attributes and linguistic preferences in the decision-making process. This study adopts the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method as an approach to SSWM that goes beyond experts’ linguistic opinions. This study examines the causal relationships between attributes using decision-makers’ linguistic preferences; formally, the qualitative information is transformed into quantitative crisp values for visual analysis (Tseng et al., 2017). The analytic network process (ANP) is then employed to shape the hierarchical structure by testing the consistency between the theoretical structure (aspects) and industry phenomena (criteria) (Bui et al., 2020a). The study objectives are as follows:

• To develop an SSWM attribute set with qualitative information for Vietnam;

• To identify a hierarchical structure using linguistic preferences;

• To present improvement criteria in practice.

This study provides theoretical insights and practical guidelines for communities and organizations that want to achieve sustainable goals. (1) The theoretical contribution is to identify and construct an SSWM attribute set, present a hierarchical model that extends the current models, and determine appropriate strategies for SWM to achieve operational success. (2) Practical guidelines are provided with important implications for society, local communities, and relevant organizations and institutions in terms of promoting the diversity of waste management approaches to achieve sustainable targets.

The rest of this study is organized into five sections. The next section addresses the literature; additionally, measurement attributes and methodological recommendations are proposed. The next two sections present the proposed methods in more detail, followed by the study results. The fourth section presents the implications. Finally, the conclusion, limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed in the last section.