Identification of behavior patterns in household solid waste generation in Mexicali's city: Study case

A strategy of household waste data analysis is proposed in this work, based on the WEKA workbench, developed on the Pattern Recognition community. The analysis was conducted on data collected from homes at residential areas in the city of Mexicali, Mexico. The data included information about solid waste produced and also the householder's commitment to the environment, assessed in a Likert's scale based on a questionnaire. A cluster analysis and a tree classifier constructed using the clustered data are presented. An analysis of the decision tree allowed to translate the resulting tree in a set of production rules. After the interpretation of these rules, we were able to predict an environmental behavior, based on the information about waste generation and the questionnaire answers. The rules showed a tendency to bring together members of the same family, concurring in all cases the reference to the same period of waste generation. The elements identified on each rule indicate that the socioeconomic stratum is an important factor, related to behavioral attributes and consumption habits, the main relationship is based on attributes of waste generation as glass, organics, paper, inert, mixer containers and sanitary. The discovered relationships between the cluster, socio-demographic, behavioral and waste attributes are presented and discussed.

[1]  King-Sun Fu,et al.  Handbook of pattern recognition and image processing , 1986 .

[2]  J. Crété,et al.  A Multilevel Analysis of the Determinants of Recycling Behavior in the European Countries , 2001 .

[3]  Catherine Bounsaythip,et al.  Overview of Data Mining for Customer Behavior Modeling , 2001 .

[4]  Ian H. Witten,et al.  Data mining: practical machine learning tools and techniques, 3rd Edition , 1999 .

[5]  F. Kaiser,et al.  Ecological behavior's dependency on different forms of knowledge , 2003 .

[6]  J. Ross Quinlan,et al.  Induction of Decision Trees , 1986, Machine Learning.

[7]  C. Saunders.  The Emerging Field of Conservation Psychology , 2003 .

[8]  Stewart Barr,et al.  Factors Influencing Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors , 2007 .

[9]  Gerardo Bocco,et al.  Forecasting Generation of Urban Solid Waste in Developing Countries—A Case Study in Mexico , 2001, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

[10]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Environmental Cognition, Perceptions, and Attitudes , 2001 .

[11]  David G. Stork,et al.  Pattern Classification , 1973 .

[12]  Paul S Phillips,et al.  Determining the drivers for householder pro-environmental behaviour: waste minimisation compared to recycling , 2004 .

[13]  Douglas H. Fisher,et al.  Iterative Optimization and Simplification of Hierarchical Clusterings , 1996, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[14]  Fakhru'l-Razi Ahmadun,et al.  Environmental concerns, knowledge and practices gap among Malaysian teachers , 2003 .

[15]  Christer Berglund,et al.  Citizen and consumer: the dual role of individuals in environmental policy , 2006 .

[16]  O. Buenrostro,et al.  Solid waste management in municipalities in Mexico: goals and perspectives , 2003 .

[17]  G. J. Dennison,et al.  A socio-economic based survey of household waste characteristics in the city of Dublin, Ireland. I. Waste composition , 1996 .

[18]  Andrew W. Gilg,et al.  Differences Between Household Waste Reduction, Reuse and Recycling Behaviour: a Study of Reported Behaviours, Intentions and Explanatory Variables , 2001 .

[19]  V. Corral-Verdugo,et al.  On the Relationship Between Antisocial and Anti-Environmental Behaviors: An Empirical Study , 2003 .

[20]  Educational Attainment and Regional Economic Performance in Mexico , 2005 .

[21]  S. C. Wirasinghe,et al.  Relation of waste generation and composition to socio-economic factors: a case study , 2007, Environmental monitoring and assessment.

[22]  Sara Ojeda-Benítez,et al.  The municipal solid waste cycle in Mexico: final disposal , 2003 .

[23]  Frances Fahy,et al.  Environmental Attitudes and Behaviour: Values, Actions and Waste Management , 2006 .

[24]  Bruno S. Frey,et al.  Environmental Morale and Motivation , 2006 .