Monday, October 1, 2012

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

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.
Full-size image (63 K)
E-Waste flow chart
by Qingbin Songa, Zhishi Wanga, E-mail the corresponding author, Jinhui Lib 
a Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China 
b School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Volume 106; 15 September 2012; Pages 8–16
Keywords: e-waste; Behaviors and attitudes; WTP; Questionnaire survey; Macau

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