Abstract
Building upon the ubiquitousness of smartphones, local governments are now providing garbage separation apps to their residents with the aim of promoting more appropriate garbage disposal habits and reducing the amount of garbage. Although it may still be too early to understand if quantitative studies on the factors determining the introduction of such garbage separation apps and those hoping to determine whether the apps can achieve the expected effects are sufficient or not, this article studies both the determining factors of the apps and the effect of the apps empirically, based on a survey on how the apps were implemented in all municipalities in the Tohoku and Kanto regions (with the exception of the 23 Tokyo wards and Futaba-machi in Fukushima Prefecture). Results show there was a tendency to introduce garbage separation apps more actively in areas where disaster prevention apps were already in use. The paper suggests that introduction of the apps leads to the promotion of waste reduction, but charging for combustible garbage can also counteract this positive by decreasing the garbage reduction effects seen by introducing the apps.
