The perception of air pollution and noise in urban environments: A subjective indicator across European countries.

Although urbanization has been a fundamental feature of economic development, increasingly important concerns about environmental quality have led to a wide-ranging debate about the concept of urban sustainability. In this paper, we examine how living in urban areas affects people's perceptions of two specific aspects of environmental quality, namely, air pollution and noise. Specifically, for every country, we develop an indicator that is based on these perceptions. The findings confirm that among European countries, the effects of urban agglomerations on the households' perceptions of environmental quality reflect a certain degree of heterogeneity. The proposed indicator provides new evidence about previously unexplored interactions between perceptions and macro-economic factors, such as income inequality, public spending on the environment and public debt. Through a comparison with an objective measure of the exposure of urban inhabitants to noise and air pollution, we find support for the intuition that subjective perceptions can be employed jointly with objective indicators to obtain full and comprehensive knowledge of the quality of urban environments.

Do social capital and the quality of institutions affect waste recycling?

In a social capital framework, the quality of institutions and generalised social trust enhance attitudes towards disposal practices that are less environmentally invasive for the. This study aims to improve our empirical knowledge of this relationship through panel data models to show that waste recycling is affected by social capital and government effectiveness. The study uses Italian annual provincial data (NUTS-3 level) for 2004-2016 period to show that social capital and the quality of institutions are extremely important in determining waste recycling behavior. We find that both social capital and the quality of institutions, which act as 'substitutes for goods', increase waste recycling, although with different effects at the territorial level. In the southern and central areas, waste recycling needs to be spurred through policy interventions aimed at improving the quality of institutions, education and trust among citizens, whereas in northern Italy, social capital on its own is sufficient to enhance waste recycling. Hence, our results suggest that policies for waste recycling cannot be uncoupled from the promotion of social cohesion and institutional quality.