How Far is Campania from the Best-Performing Region in Italy? A Territorial-Divide Analysis of Separate Waste Collection

The aim of this paper is to investigate the divides in separate waste collection (SWC) between Campania and Veneto from a twofold perspective that considers both intensity (the size of the gap) and inequality (the differences among the SWC distributions across municipalities). In the framework of Kapp’s social cost theory, the Recentered Influence Function regression allows an evaluation of the amount of territorial divides that are accounted for by the: (i) regional component, which captures the extent to which regional authorities transpose national legislation into programs of waste management; (ii) municipal component, which explains the effect of the operational strategies adopted by each local authority to guarantee an adequate performance. As the best-performing region in Italy, Veneto reached an average SWC level far superior to that of Campania in 2012, and more importantly, most of its municipalities exceeded the 65% target set by Legislative Decree 152/2006 with a smaller variability within the region. However, a more detailed analysis shows that the policies and strategies for waste management set by the regional authority in Campania should be more effective at the initial stage, but are partly held back by the successive implementation steps controlled by each municipality. One of the primary deterrents of reaching a better performance in waste management in Campania lies in the weakness of its institutions, which makes the region more vulnerable with a large amount of heterogeneity in waste management performance across municipalities.