Drivers of municipal waste generation in Nordic countries: panel evidence

Municipal waste generation remains a persistent sustainability challenge, even in countries with strong environmental governance and circular economy ambitions. Yet it remains unclear how affluence, household final consumption expenditure as a share of GDP, digitalization, innovation, urbanization, and recycling relate to waste generation in advanced economies. This study examines associations between per capita municipal waste generation and GDP per capita, household final consumption expenditure as a share of GDP, digital infrastructure, patent applications, urbanization, and recycling rates across five Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—over 2000–2024. The analysis combines tests for cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, unit roots, and cointegration with a fixed-effects model estimated using Driscoll–Kraay standard errors as the main specification, alongside PCSE, FGLS, and leave-one-country-out robustness checks. The Dumitrescu–Hurlin procedure is also used to assess directional predictability. The results show that associations involving GDP per capita, patent applications, and urbanization are sensitive to model specification, year controls, and sample composition. In simpler pooled models and specifications without year effects, GDP per capita and urbanization are often positively associated with municipal waste generation, but these relationships weaken once common time effects are absorbed. Patent applications are positive in some regressions, but their sign and significance are unstable across estimators. Household consumption, digital infrastructure, and recycling do not show consistently stable associations. Overall, the findings are best interpreted as panel associations in levels rather than definitive long-run relationships.