Elsevier

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume 106, 15 September 2012, Pages 8-16
Journal of Environmental Management

Residents' behaviors, attitudes, and willingness to pay for recycling e-waste in Macau

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.03.036Get rights and content

Abstract

Large quantities of e-waste are presently being generated in Macau, but since recycling facilities and laws on e-waste still need to be developed, most e-waste cannot currently be properly treated. Moreover, little is known about residents' behaviors, attitudes, and their willingness to pay (WTP) for recycling e-waste. These issues are discussed in this study, based on a questionnaire survey on household electronic product usage. In 2010, “Life span completed” was the primary reason respondents abandoned their electronic products, accounting for about 37.97% of responses; the main disposal methods of e-waste in Macau were “Retailers retrieve from consumer” and “Sale to a recycling corporation.” While having little understanding of e-waste disposal issues, most residents were still willing to hand their e-waste into the government for centralized collection. In addition, the respondents gave “telephone reservation” as their preferred collection method. Finally, the residents' WTP in Macau was estimated by the logistic regression method. It was found that education level, age and household income were the significant factors affecting residents' WTP. The monthly mean WTP was 20.03MOP (2.50 US dollar) per household, and the annual WTP was approximately 40,185,067 MOP (5,023,133 US dollar) for all of Macau. The results of our study can help managers develop more effective environmental management policies for e-waste disposal.

Highlights

► Behaviors, attitudes, and WTP on recycling e-waste in Macau were firstly analyzed. ► Most e-waste in Macau flowed into informal sectors, and wasn't treated properly. ► Education Level, Age and Household Income were significant factors affecting WTP. ► Total annual value of WTP was approximately 40 million MOP for all of Macau.

Introduction

Electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world (Widmer and Oswald-Krapf, 2005; Peralta and Fontanas, 2006), and Macau, the special administrative region of China, is no exception. In the past decade, Macau society has experienced significant changes. Rapid economic development has fostered the increased consumption of electronic products and resulted in the generation of a large amount of e-waste. e-waste generation in Macau was estimated at about 16 kg per capita in 2010, which is close to the average generation amount (16–18 kg per capita) in EU countries(UNU, 2008), and is estimated to continue to increase by 3% a year (JDC, 2011). In spite of this large volume of e-waste generated in Macau, the reclamation and disposal of e-waste are not well implemented: large amounts of e-waste are transferred to other regions and not effectually reused or recycled because of the lack of reclamation channels. Macau is currently faced with an urgent need to find methods of dealing with this increasing volume of e-waste.

e-waste is a very different kind of waste, compared to traditional municipal wastes (Khetriwal et al., 2009; Duan et al., 2011). Conventional waste management policies more suited to handling traditional waste types cannot be applied to the e-waste stream because it contains both highly toxic substances, which pose a danger to health and the environment (Guo et al., 2010; Leung et al., 2006), and valuable raw materials which can be recovered (Huisman, 2004; Nnorom and Osibanjo, 2008). However, there is still a lack of special policies on e-waste and specific e-waste recycling facilities in Macau. e-waste management in Macau relies mainly on the Environmental Outline Law (Administrative instruction No. 2/1991) and the General Regulations on Public Places (Administrative instruction No. 28/2004), both of which are mainly focusing on other municipal solid waste. At present, due to Macau's small geographic area and the high cost of land, solid waste incineration has been given a top priority over other waste disposal methods in Macau (Jin et al., 2006). According to the survey, some e-waste has been mixed with household waste, and, along with e-waste from the government sectors, has been treated in the Macau Incineration Plant (MIP). Though the MIP has been equipped with pollution control systems, many valuable materials were wasted in the treatment process. The main flow chart of e-waste in Macau was shown in Fig. 1.

According to several studies (Khetriwal et al., 2009; Gottberg et al., 2006; Yamaguchi, 2002; Lee et al., 2007), in order to boost e-waste recycling, one policy is often proposed: extended producer responsibility (EPR). EPR, first proposed by Lindhqvist in 1992, states that producers should extend their responsibility to the entire life of a product—not only to its production and sale, but also to the reclaiming and disposal of the end-of-life product (Lindhqvist, 1992).

The establishment and implement of relevant policies and recycling facilities, which can make e-waste separately disposal and recycling as resources, must be based on consumers' behavior and their willing to pay (WTP) to recycle e-waste. However, most studies have focused on how to implement EPR policy and on the function of government in e-waste recycling (Fleckinger and Glachant, 2010; Nnoroma et al., 2009; Zhao et al., 2010; Mo et al., 2009), and research on WTP or consumers' behavior regarding the recycling of e-waste has attracted insufficient attention. If the Macau government wants to implement effective policies and build appropriate facilities for recycling e-waste, the willingness of consumers to participate in recycling activities is essential, for without this, neither government policies nor participation by producers can be effectively put into practice. Therefore, there is a pressing need to survey the behaviors and WTP of residents in Macau.

Some researchers have begun to focus on the WTP and behaviors survey of recycling e-waste. Nnoroma et al. (2009) analyzed the willingness of residents to participate in electronic waste recycling in Nigeria in 2009, by taking mobile phone recycling as a case study; Wang et al. (2011) investigated the behavior of residents toward electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) recycling in Beijing in 2011; Yoo and Kwak, 2009 applied a contingent valuation (CV) method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits for green electricity in Korea in 2009. In addition, Jin et al. examined the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for black-faced spoonbill conservation in Macau using the contingent valuation method (CVM) in 2008. The purpose of all these researches is to help policy makers make the relevant policies and laws to solve conflict between development and conservation.

This study used a survey questionnaire to determine residents' WTP and behavior concerning e-waste recycling in Macau, with the intent of gathering information about three areas: (1) the characteristics of residents' recycling behaviors in Macau, including ownership of electronic products, the reasons and methods for obsolescence, and cost of recycling e-waste; (2) the residents' attitudes on the centralized collection of e-waste and its collection methods in Macau; (3) the residents' WTP for recycling e-waste in Macau, analyzed from four aspects (modes of payment; reasons for respondents' unwillingness to pay for recycling; relationships between WTP and household characteristics; and residents' detail WTP for recycling e-waste in Macau).

Section snippets

e-waste source and generation in Macau

In some developing countries (e.g. mainland China, India) (Li et al., 2006), e-waste sources include both domestic generation and imports. In mainland China, e-waste imports are divided into legal and illegal imports. The former is managed and controlled by the China Customs and State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Domestic generation comes mainly from three major sources: households; the offices of businesses, private institutions, and government; and the original equipment

Household questionnaires

In this study, we defined one household as the basic research unit in which two or more generations live together to share expenditures and income. There are two main reasons for using this definition:

  • (1)

    The household is the primary source of e-waste in Macau;

  • (2)

    Disposal of end-of-life electronic products is a family practice, as electronic products are generally considered properties common to the family as a whole.

The questionnaire contained four sections. The first section comprised some general

The socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents

A total of 400 personal interviews were administered in 2010 by trained interviewers at respondents' homes; the sample effective response rate through the face-to-face interviews was 99.75%.

Table 2 reports the descriptive statistics for the main socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents. Comparing the demographic profile of the survey respondents with the Macau census data on the characteristics of the Macau population as a whole, the survey data was found to be close to the Macau

Conclusions

With rapid economic growth and tourism industry development over the past several decades, accompanied by the entry of more and more electronic products into residents' households, e-waste issues have arisen. Recycling of e-waste in Macau is still in its initial stages, and e-waste problems have become a potential threat to the environment and human health.

Under ordinary circumstances that simply take into consideration the market-based value of recycling, the e-waste problem cannot be properly

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 program 2009AA06Z304), the project “The controlling of vehicle exhaust pollution and electronic waste and their recycling technology demonstration in Macao” (SQ2009AA06Z3483770), and by the University of Macau.

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