Fig. 1: Conceptual model for characterizing the polycentricity of waste governance in different cities.

The model aims to measure the polycentricity of waste governance at the community level, where the key players include households, former recyclers, and informal recyclers. The three will rely on the expected net profits under different strategies to make decisions, thereby arriving at the equilibrium of strategy combination. Here, S1 and S2 represent the positive and negative strategy choices of these agents, respectively, and modes 1, 2, and 3 denote the waste governance modes in different cities.