Sustainable Policy Design—How Policy Impacts Household Waste Management: A Case-Study from Shanghai

Waste management systems have always been considered complex. Scholars have studied waste management mostly from a macro perspective for a long time, considering waste management policies as a fraction of this complex system. This study presents the causal variables and feedback relationships related to waste management from another perspective, from the inside of a policy, using the macroscopic ideas of Environment-based design (EBD) and the system dynamics pictorial representation. It clarifies the way in which policy acts on waste management systems and provides a new perspective for subsequent research on waste management policy.