| As a collaborative approach to ecologically sustainable industrial development, industrial symbiosis is concerned with the exchange of waste energy, water, and materials among proximately located firms. So far, industrial symbiosis-related research has mostly confined to the technical and engineering dimensions methodologically and industrialized countries geographically. My research aims at contributing to this body of knowledge from the viewpoints of exploring the economic and institutional dimensions of industrial symbiosis and examining its implementation in a rapidly industrializing country---China.;More specifically, my research has accomplished four objectives. First, it has systematically explored the historic development processes, current status, and aggregate environmental benefits of industrial symbiosis in a leading eco-industrial park in China---Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area. Second, it has assessed the potential role of adaptive, reflexive, and participatory approaches in eco-industrial park planning to facilitate the emergence and development of industrial symbiosis in the two existing industrial parks in China---Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area and China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park. Third, it has put forward a generic framework for assessing the drivers of and barriers to industrial symbiosis on the basis of institutional theory and transaction cost economics and evaluated the primary drivers of and barriers to industrial symbiosis in TEDA quantitatively. Fourth, it has applied transaction cost economic theory to explain how the main attributes of transactions (i.e. asset specificity and frequency of exchange) determine the organizational forms and likelihood of industrial waste management practice.;In particular, the research has revealed several key findings concerning the geographical features of energy, water, and material-based symbiotic exchanges, the role of the industrial park's boundary, and dynamic evolution of 81 symbiotic exchanges that have been identified in a mixed industrial park in China. The research has also for the first time combined the perspectives of institutional theory and transaction cost economics to explore the determinants for companies to engage in industrial symbiosis. The dissertation has filled a gap in the study of organizational forms (i.e., spot market, neo-classical contracting, relational contracting, joint venture, and unitary governance) of industrial symbiosis and conducted the first empirical research on how transaction costs determine the organizational forms of industrial symbiosis consisting 123 transactions in the market, hybrid, and hierarchy forms of waste recovery/management taking place in the leading Chinese eco-industrial park---the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area. |
