Analysis of resident’s behavior intention of Municipal Solid Waste

With the rapid urbanization in China, the municipal solid waste (MSW) in cities has become one of the most important problems needed to be resolved from the city development point of view. Although MSW classification is considered a critical process in waste management, it is not easy to implement it and bring satisfactory performance. As the main action body of MSW classification, the residents’ participation is significant. Although their environmental attitude and value could not affect the environmental behavior directly, it could put influence on the behavior through the environmental behavior intention. In other words, the behavior intention is an important factor of the behavior. As a result, to improve the resident’s enthusiasm of participating in classification, it is important to dig deep into the main factors that influence people’s MSW classification behavior intention, the effect degree of each factor, and how they put influence on people’s classification behavior intention at household level. With the residents in Beijing as research targets, this thesis analyzes and identifies factors impacting residents’ behavior intention of MSW classification behavior. The strength of those factors on the behavior intention is also studied, and a theoretical framework about resident’s behavior intention of MSW classification is developed. Based on these analyses and finding, some suggestions are provided for municipal governments to understand the status quo and influencing factors of resident’s behavior intention of MSW classification in Beijing. The main contents and results of this study are as follows: 1. Based on the literature review, considering the reality of Beijing, this thesis develops a theoretical framework of residents’ behavior intention for MSW classification in Beijing with the Theory of Planned Behavior, Infrastructure-Service-Behavior model as well as Environmental Behavior theory as theoretical basis. According to the theoretical framework, those factors, as main research variables are identified that have close relationship with residents’ behavior of MSW classification, that is, phycological variables, situational factors and environmental factors. 2. Based on the theoretical framework of residents’ behavior of MSW classification in Beijing, this thesis develops a questionnaire which includes all the variables mentioned above. By the means of random sampling, this thesis tests the reliability and validity of the questionnaire which confirm that the data are suitable for statistic analysis. 3. This thesis analyzes the relationships between behavior intention and the relevant factors systematically by means of the empirical research method. Statistic results show that the psychological and situational variables have influence on behavior intention, well the environmental variables have no influence on it. This thesis reveals the relationship between residents’ behavior intention of MSW classification in Beijing and it relevant factors, which provides an analysis tool and ii Analysis of Resident’s Behavior Intention of MSW Classification in Beijing theoretical reference for promoting residents’ enthusiasm to participate in MSW classification.