Community-Level Household Waste Disposal Behavior Simulation and Visualization under Multiple Incentive Policies—An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 15; no. 13; p. 10427
• Main Authors: Ma, Hancong, Li, Mei, Tong, Xin, Dong, Ping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.07.2023
• Subjects: Analysis; Behavior; China; Classification; Decision making; Households; Human acts; Human behavior; Management decisions; Participation; Propaganda; Recycling; Recycling (Waste, etc.); Refuse and refuse disposal; Simulation; Simulation methods; Social networks; Social norms; Sustainability; System theory; Waste disposal; China; Beijing China; United States > US
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su151310427

The classification and recycling of household waste becomes a major issue in today’s urban environmental protection and domestic waste disposal. Although various policies promoting household waste classification have been introduced, the recovery rate failed to reach the expected result. Existing studies on incentive policies for household waste recycling tried to integrate subjective and objective factors in human behavior decisions. To explore how effective interventions can promote household waste classification in communities, this article developed an Agent-Based Model (ABM) based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to simulate the participation of households under eight different policy scenarios. The result shows that: monetary incentive is most effective in inducing participation, while social norms have different impacts on household decision under different policy intervention. Under policy stimulus, the participation rate of garbage sorting increased from 18% to 76%. This model has been applied into an online community-based participatory virtual simulation 3D system, which aims to help university students better understand how policies affect household recycling behaviors, which end up affecting the environment.