Spatial characteristics of municipal solid waste generation and its influential spatial factors on a city scale: a case study of Xiamen, China

Urban planners require an understanding of the spatial patterns of municipal solid waste generation to design policies for various locales within the city. Many of the previous studies used demographic and socioeconomic factors as the determinants, but few of them focused on the influential spatial factors such as land use and building coverage. In this study, we used global and local spatial autocorrelation tools to reveal the spatial pattern of MSW generation inside an island city in China. Correlation analysis and linear regression were then applied to identify influential factors including population, land use and building coverage. Results showed that (1) there were significant mirror global spatial autocorrelations for MSW quantities and densities; (2) local spatial autocorrelations revealed that the MSW hot spots were concentrated in the early industrial zones and the old downtown; and (3) total and seasonal MSW was predominantly determined by people’s socioeconomic activities better reflected by C&R land or commercial land and vacant land. Different sources of MSW had some distinctive significant influential factors which reflect their differences in socioeconomic activities. We believe that those significant models constructed from the identified influential spatial factors could provide quick, useful and low-cost decision support for MSW management.