FACTORS INFLUENCING HOUSEHOLD ELECTRONIC WASTE (E-WASTE) RECYCLING PARTICIPATION
Nazatul Faizah Haron
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Gong Badak Campus, 21300 Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu Darul Iman, Malaysia
Shaufique F. Sidique
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Alias Radam
Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
ABSTRACT
The amount of electronic waste (e-waste) has relatively increased along with the rapid increases in technological and economic development in Malaysia. In order to avoid dumping massive amounts of electronic waste in landfills, recycling programs were implemented by policymakers and governments to attract people to participate in these programs. The success of recycling programs largely depends on household participation and their commitment. Therefore, a better understanding on recycling behaviour will help to design and improve the effectiveness of these programs. This paper studies the profile of people who are involved in recycling activities and examines the factors influencing household recycling participation. The findings of this study suggests that socioeconomic variables, for example, education and income, are the predictors of recycling behaviour. Attitudinal factors were also found to affect recycling participation, such as ATTITUDE, BELIEF, CONVENIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, and SOCIAL PRESSURE.
Keywords: recycling, e-waste, factor analysis
1. INTRODUCTION
In the new global economy, consumption of electrical and electronic equipment has become a central issue in economic development. The increase in consumption has brought huge impacts on the demand for electronic waste, which is not limited to households, but also across to the public sector and the government. An increase in the use of electronic equipment indicates that large amounts of (e-waste) will be generated and this will cause widespread damage to the environment as well as human health because of the hazardous chemicals contained in electronic equipment.
As a developing country, Malaysia is also experiencing the same problems of dumping huge amounts of e-waste because of the increasing consumption of electronic equipment in every sector. An increase in the use of electronic equipment will lead to the dumping of waste as a result of waste disposal. For example, the quantity of e-waste produced in 2009 was 134 thousand metric tons, 163 metric tons in 2010 and 152 metric tons in 2011 . The increasing volume of e-waste creates potential for high level 1 of hazardous materials to pose a significant threat to public safety if electronic waste was improperly discarded.
To overcome this problem, recycling is recognised to be an effective way to reduce waste sent to landfills. According to past studies, recycling is the best alternative to treat electrical and electronic equipment waste (Bereketli et al., 2011). In the East Asia region, China in particular has received imported waste from developed countries to recycle since electrical and electronic equipment is
Source: Department of Environment Malaysia (DOE) 1
becoming an important waste stream that can cause significant damage to the environment and human health (Hicks et al., 2005). However, China is also facing a significant number of challenges in their efforts to reform recycling and disposal practices for electrical and electronic equipment waste. The challenges include informal waste collectors and a lack of awareness among consumers, collectors, and recyclers. In Korea, the unit pricing system was implemented to encourage and educate people since 1995. Consequently, household recycling practices were increased and waste substantially decreased since the regulation was introduced (Lee and Paik, 2011).
Meanwhile, Japan and Taiwan have different approaches to surpass these issues due to their waste- related policy schemes. For example, Japan was the first country that enforced the Home Appliance Recycling Law (HARL) beginning in 1998, which specifically concerns e-waste. However, this system was reviewed in 2003 and led to the adoption of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) System, which was used as a financial incentive to encourage producers to produce environmentally friendly products in order to reduce toxicity and waste. In Taiwan, the concern is more about valuable resources for selecting appliances to be recycled with the implementation of the Recycling Fund Management Board (RFMB) since 1998 (Lee and Na, 2010).
In Malaysia, the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulations 2005 has replaced the 1989 regulation to enable Malaysia to control the transboundary movement of e-waste and implement recycling programs in order to reduce the growing volume of e-waste. Recycling programs have been widely initiated since 1993, but unfortunately, the campaign has failed because of less commitment from top management and a lack of serious awareness programs. To date, the recycling rate in Malaysia is reported to be only five percent. This is low compared to many developed countries with approximately 50% recycling rates. Therefore, Malaysia recently started to implement and take these issues seriously since electronic devices and equipment has proliferated in recent decades. To achieve this mission requires full cooperation from all parties, including industries, the government, and consumers. However, recycling on its own is not enough to increase the recycling rate without the involvement and awareness from all members of society. Knowledge education is needed to educate people and to attract them to participate in recycling activities with an emphasis on the importance of managing e-waste. The purpose of this education is to guide people to take this issue seriously and to help them deal with their electronic appliances as their electronics reach their end-of-life.
According to previous studies, most researchers investigated on the handling and management of solid waste. Normally, they focused on municipal solid waste management and how to improve solid waste management facilities (Manaf et al., 2009 and Afroz et al., 2011). To date; however, little is known about the preferences for e-waste recycling, especially in Malaysia. Malaysia generates about 18,000 tons of waste daily with around 0.85 kg/cap/day of waste averaged over a population of about 28 million . This study will fill the gaps by examining the factors that influence recycling activities and 2 analysing the attitude and behaviour towards e-waste recycling activities. More specifically, this study will describe the profile of e-waste recyclers in Putrajaya, examine household attitudes and behaviour towards e-waste recycling, and finally, analyse the effects of households’ demographics, social, economic, and attitudinal factors on e-waste recycling participation.
The study will be conducted in Putrajaya, which is located 25 km south of Kuala Lumpur. As a planned city that serves to be the federal administrative centre of Malaysia, Putrajaya has conducted several programs to increase recycling rates and implement current schemes to encourage recycling activities. Unfortunately, the level of recycling is not satisfactory and continuous effort to educate the community and promote recycling is needed to maintain a sustainable environment. This study will enable gaining a better understanding of the antecedents of recycling behaviour that will be extremely useful in designing public services and develop educational programs to increase recycling participation.
2. METHODS
A regression model was developed for this study to explore the recycling behavior of residents in Putrajaya and determine factors influencing recycling willingness. It is assumed that the household seeks to maximize the total utility received from the consumption of goods and services. Assuming an economy in a county comprised of N identical households with utility functions represented by
http://www.doe.gov.my
2
U i = U ( X i j , S i n , E i m , P i k ) (1)
Where;
U = utility
i = households i, (where i = 1,2,3…n) j = number of goods consume (1,...,10) n = number of situational factors (1,...,n) m = number of environmental factors (1,...,n) k = number of psychological factors (1,...,n)
Xj represents composite goods and services consumed by household i, Sin is the situational factors that the household i perceives to facilitate waste control. Situational factors, are considered as enabling and disabling influences, and are commonly classed as socio-demographic (Lee and Paik, 2011), consumer knowledge, commitment and experience of the behavior in question (Hornik et al., 1995 and Simpson, 2012) and self-organization of recycling (Hansmann et al., 2006). In previous research, demographic characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, education and income-earned by individuals has been the most consistently and likely predictors of recycling behavior to be engaged in environment actions (Tonglet et al., 2004; Corral-Verdugo, 2003; and Saphores et al., 2012). Davis et al., (2006) noted that convenience as a situational factor strongly influenced recycling behavior.
However, Latif et al., (2012) noted that situational factors are non-significant predictor’s of behavior but are significant predictors on intention to recycle.
Eim is the environmental factors that contain the relationship between nature, culture, environment and human. The term environmental value is used to define those underlying orientations held by individuals towards the physical environment. In past studies, the term has been used interchangeably with other concept such as ecological worldwide, environmental concern and environmental attitudes (Dunlap et al., 2000). Ramayah et al., (2012) showed that the attitudes of the environment have been linked to recycling behavior and the findings indicate environmental awareness is significantly related to attitudes towards recycling. In general, people are likely to choose to live in a clean and safe environment without any contamination. As such, people or individuals who are more open to change, more kindness and concern for others and feel closer to nature are more likely to be pro-environment and involve in recycling. Previous researchers have revealed the impact of electronic waste towards the environment and exposure to these materials is a hazard to human health if the disposal of the waste is not managed properly (Misra and Pandey, 2005; Robinson, 2009; Frazzoli et al., 2010; and Giusti, 2009). Stern et al., 1995 also stated that those who value the environment for personal worth have been found more likely to behave in environmentally appropriate ways. Meaning, they have a good attitude to conserve the environment and directly gained their utility.
Finally, Pik indicates the psychological factors that contain attitudes, thoughts, feelings, knowledge towards the environment and or other cognitive or unique characteristics of households i that will influence their performance in recycling practices. Tang et al., (2011) noted that moral norm, attitude towards recycling, concern for the community and self-efficacy influence household recycling behavior most significantly. Similarly Corral-Verdugo (2003) and Barr (2007) stated that environmental knowledge, environmental beliefs and conservation motives also show positive correlations in recycling behavior. Tonglet et al. (2004) also suggested that it is directly influenced by psychological factors of recycling behavior using the theory of planned behavior (TPB). In a nutshell, perception, attitude and knowledge are identified as key questions or variables in recycling behavior.
Consumers will feel strongly motivated to do the recycling practices when their friends or family members encourage them to do so.
3. RESULTS
3.1 Results of Logit Model
The developed model seeks to analyze which socio-economic factors and variables influence e-waste recycling. In this section, a logistic regression model was used to analyze the effects of demographics, attitude, knowledge and environmental affiliation variables derived from factor analysis on the recycling activities. The regression parameters are described in Table 1.
Table 1: Logistic Regression
4. CONCLUSION
This research was conducted to better understand individuals’ participation in recycling work. It was initiated in 2 main steps, beginning with Factor Analysis by using Principle Component Analysis with varimax rotation with the purpose of reducing data. Reducing the number of attitudinal variables into a
Dependent variable: Recycle/not recycle
Variable Model 1 Model 2
Coeff. Std. error Coeff. Std. error
GENDER 0.032 0.202 0.052 0.210
AGE 0.032 0.014** 0.027 0.015*
INCOME 0.000 0.000*** 0.000 0.000***
EDU 0.125 0.50** 0.155 0.052***
APRT 1.415 0.472** 0.473 0.500
TERRACE 1.175 0.477 0.428 0.500
SEMID 2.018 0.721** 1.266 0.740*
BUNGALOW 2.232 0.884** 1.305 0.913
ATTITUDE 0.260 0.123**
BELIEF -0.379 0.128***
CONVENIENCE 0.582 0.159***
KNOWLEDGE -0.146 0.146
SITUATIONAL 0.054 0.129
SOCIAL -0.369 0.185**
CONSTANT -1.768 1.010* -3.346 1.281***
Observations 600 600
-2 Log-likelihood 634.02 610.41
Pseudo R2 0.07 0.15
* Statistically significant at the 10% level
** Statistically significant at the 5% level
*** Statistically significant at the 1% level
few interpretable factors was used to obtain explanatory variables in the statistical model. In the next step, the estimation of a logistic model was performed to analyze the influence of socioeconomic, demographic and behavioral factors on e-waste recycling. The success of recycling practices is largely dependent in the significant factors that determine the participation if people in recycling. This study provides a better understanding of the underlying factors that influence the percentage of recycling practices which responds to the volume of recycling and encourages their participation. The finding of this study suggests that socioeconomic variables for example education and income are the predictors of recycling behavior. These variables are highly connected to household consumption and thus, will lead to waste generation compared to gender and type of dwelling. The results indicate that conviction about recycling attitude, belief on the deterioration of environment, recycling convenience and social pressure are significant factors of recycling behavior. The convenience of recycling can be effective in promoting recycling practices by increasing awareness and educating people to be responsible towards environmental.
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