A review of the differential impacts of China’s mandatory waste sorting policies on urban–rural household waste sorting

Since 2019, some Chinese cities have introduced mandatory household waste sorting policies to reshape residents’ waste sorting intention and behaviour. However, evidence of their effectiveness remains inconsistent, particularly between urban and rural areas. Hence, it is crucial to understand the effectiveness of these policies, particularly from an urban–rural comparative perspective to enhance the precision of policy implementation. This study employs a narrative review approach to examine 43 articles on household waste sorting intention and behaviour in China, sourced from the Web of Science (WoS) database. We find that urban-focused research substantially outweighs rural studies. In addition, the reviewed literature is largely concentrated in Shanghai, Beijing, and Jiangsu. We further find that infrastructural instruments demonstrate consistently positive effects on both waste sorting intention and behaviour in urban and rural areas. Composite instruments also show stable positive effects on waste sorting behaviour. Informational instruments produce uniformly positive effects on waste sorting intention across urban and rural areas, but their behavioural effects are less consistent in urban areas. Moreover, reward and punishment instruments show less consistent effects on both waste sorting intention and behaviour in urban areas, while in rural areas their intention effects are more stable but behavioural outcomes remain mixed. The results suggest that governments should prioritise infrastructural development in both urban and rural areas, given its consistently positive effects. Reward and punishment mechanisms require further examination and policy adjustment in both urban and rural areas. Informational strategies in urban areas should be refined to enhance waste sorting behaviour.