Blockchain Waste Management: A Systematic Literature Review for the Public Administration

This research contributes to the studies on public service innovation and the New Public Governance theory. The results are based on a systematic literature review that was carried out to characterize and critically evaluate the published literature on blockchain waste management until 2024. A keyword search was first performed by using IEEE Xplore, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, and Web of Science. After removing the papers that were not closely related to the topic, 120 articles were retained for an in-depth review. The research highlights how blockchain technology applications in waste management have the potential to change the current organizational patterns and support the public service processes in assuring cleanliness and healthy environments for communities. Among multiple new digital technologies, the characteristics of blockchain have made it promising to transform many activities related to public service provision, such as waste management. Public Administrations are found to benefit from the application of blockchain technology through improvements in processes efficacy and traceability, while regulatory uncertainty and questions around scalability represent major costs and risks for them. This systematic literature review makes several contributions. Firstly, providing insights for interpreting some emerging applications of blockchain in the field of waste management and clarifying the research paths in the context of blockchain, digitalised waste management, and circular economy. Secondly, identifying the main research topics and research methods, it enables researchers to identify which areas are yet to be explored and shows those that have already been discussed by extent in the literature. The need for more in-depth research has emerged to have a full understanding of the situations in which blockchain technology is beneficial.