Geographic networks matter for pro-environmental waste disposal behavior in rural China: Bayesian estimation of a spatial probit model

Recent years have witnessed an increased social, political, and academic interest in the influencing mechanism of pro-environmental waste disposal behavior. Particularly, it is widely acknowledged that social networks, usually represented by psychological closeness/distances in literature, can influence others’ behavior via sharing information and opinions. However, given the theory of behavioral contagion, geographic networks provide channels to directly observe others’ behavior and to further adapt self-behavior even in the absence of social networks. Despite this, a systematic analysis of how geographic networks affect waste disposal behavior is still lacking. Using the coordinates of the households surveyed in this study, we measure geographic networks by physical distances among household residences and distinguish the roles of geographic and social networks in shaping waste disposal behavior (including domestic waste sorting, agricultural waste disposal, sewage collection, and toilet retrofitting) by Bayesian estimation of a spatial autoregressive probit model. Besides confirming positive impacts of social networks, this empirical analysis reveals that pro-environmental waste disposal behavior spreads via geographic networks among neighboring households. More importantly, the intensity of this behavioral contagion varies between different types of waste disposal behavior due to heterogenous socio-economic characteristics.