Waste Performance of NUTS 2-regions in the EU: A Conditional Directional Distance Benefit-of-the-Doubt Model

This paper attempts to benchmark the municipal solid waste (MSW) management performance of the NUTS 2-regions in the EU by constructing a composite indicator. In order to account for commensurability, weighting and aggregation issues of the performance indicators in regional waste and materials' management, this paper advocates a conditional directional distance version of the Benefit-of-the-Doubt weighting technique. In addition, the waste management hierarchy defined by the EU is strongly embedded in the construction of our composite indicator. The results reveal considerable differences in the aggregate performance of the regions, even within Member States. In general, waste sectors of the NUTS 2-regions in Austria, Belgium, and Germany generally do well in terms of MSW management. Our results also reveal that some differences in the operating environment of the regions, such as the number of tourist overnight stays, are related to the aggregate performance of the regions. However, the observation that other conditions are not significantly related to the performance on a regional level is interesting as many policy makers frequently argue that the level of performance in their regions cannot be compared to that in other regions precisely due to this difference in operating conditions.