Enhancing Community Waste Recycling in Taiwan: Key Drivers Affecting Consumers in Waste Recycling

The municipal solid waste generation is projected to spike from 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050. In Taiwan, the upsurge of waste volume, in addition to periodic maintenance of incinerators, which may persist up to four months, has resulted in limited incineration capacity. The optimum approach to address the challenge is to reduce the amount of waste sent for incineration by effective segregation of combustible and non-combustible waste, as well as improving the public recycling rate. Local authorities play a significant role in encouraging public recycling and restricting non-burnable waste from being delivered to incinerators within a short period of time. This can greatly reduce the amount of waste and incinerator maintenance costs. This study aimed to explore the key driving factors for public participation in waste recycling and translate the determinants into policy in order to increase the waste recycling rate. The study employed literature analysis to select factors repeatedly mentioned as indicators and conducted online surveys to collect data on factors influencing consumer engagement in waste recycling in Taiwan. This study also adopted the Analytic Hierarchy Process and established a hierarchical framework with four dimensions (Psychological, Knowledge, Policy, and Infrastructure) and thirteen indicators. The findings have demonstrated that infrastructure (0.275) is the most influential aspect in affecting consumers’ recycling actions, followed by psychological (0.256) and policy aspects (0.251), and knowledge aspect (0.218) as the least influential factor. Positive rewards (0.120), recycling knowledge (0.118), and well-built infrastructure (0.113) were specifically identified as key drivers in encouraging recycling. The findings informed the public’s priorities in recycling involvement, and strategic initiatives targeted at these preferences can effectively assist local authorities in promoting citizen engagement in recycling. Policies that meet public demands, such as positive rewards for recycling, dissemination of recycling knowledge, and provision and improvement of more recycling infrastructure, can ensure the success of the policy implementation and serve as a reference for other Asian countries in reducing waste and improving the recycling rate.