Policy instrument mix balance for waste management in china: Under the policy-piloting scenario

Within a policy instrument mix, among its characteristics, balance holds a significant position. However, studies have presented mixed findings on its effect on policy effectiveness. To address this issue, we untangled the impact of instrument combinations comprising different instrument types and empirically investigated their impact on policy outcomes. Furthermore, we considered China's policy-piloting practice, which is a mechanism through which a policy is tested in certain areas before nationwide implementation, as a contingent factor in the instrument mix–outcome relationship. By relying on the context of waste management in China, we manually coded 4762 policy documents from 73 cities between 2012 and 2020. We used quasi-experimental methods, specifically propensity score matching and two-stage residual inclusion, but did not find statistically significant evidence supporting the impact of the instrument mix balance on policy performance. We found that the combination of market-based and voluntary (MV) policies can best promote policy effectiveness, whereas the combination of command and market-based (CM) policies or command and voluntary (CV) policies can impede it. The results show that policy piloting positively moderates the effects of MV and CV policy combinations. The findings have implications not only for policymaking and management but also for research on the instrument mix balance, instrument combinations, and policy piloting.