Assessing the Effectiveness of Solid Waste Management in Thailand’s Tourist Industry via the Use of DEA-Based Methods

Effective solid waste management is paramount for sustainable tourism destinations, ensuring the preservation of natural resources and promoting eco-friendly practices.This research comprehensively assesses the solid waste management systems across various locations, considering both socioeconomic and environmental factors.Utilizing primary and secondary data, we investigate waste management policies, practices, and infrastructure, employing methodologies such as trash generation data analysis, infrastructure assessments, and surveys targeting municipal authorities, waste management entities, and tourists.The study evaluates key aspects of waste management, including collection, recycling, disposal, and sustainability, utilizing non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and its variants.Our analysis involves efficiency ratings for 20 tourism locations or 4 provinces in 5 Thai regions, using inputs and outputs such as recycling rate, trash diversion rate, the number of restaurants, hotels, tourism destination size, tourist numbers, and waste management complaints.To enhance clarity and consistency, we reorganized the abstract, presenting the original contributions after synthesizing the main results.This research identifies high-performing regions that can serve as models and proposes strategies for improving less successful areas.The findings not only contribute to the development of solid waste management plans tailored to each community's unique requirements, culture, and resources in Thailand but also advocate for data-driven decision-making in waste management and resource efficiency within the tourism industry.