Apr. 2010, Volume 4, No.4 (Serial No.29) Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering, ISSN 1934-8932, USA Evaluation of Social Perception on Water Issues in Cameron Highlands (Malaysia) by Principle Factor Analysis K.W. Tan and M.B. Mokhtar Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor 43600, Malaysia Received: February 21, 2010 / Accepted: April 1, 2010 / Published: April 20, 2010. Abstract: Dealing with water resources issues requires understanding of the community perception. It is important to create a communicative partnership between community and government towards sustainable water resources management. Opinion survey is an essential step to gather the point of view from local community. However, it always generates a large and complex dataset that are difficult to be interpreted by decision maker. In order to overcome this difficulty, statistical methods are applied to develop an interpretability model for decision maker. This study demonstrated the application of Descriptive Analysis and Principle Factor Analysis (PFA) to reduce the complexity of opinion survey dataset by revealing underlying information. A total of 106 respondents were interviewed; consisting of 68 male and 38 female respondents respectively. This study first applied descriptive analysis to identify the basic score for each variable, and these variables are soil erosion (68.9%), degradation of water quality (65.1%), degradation of freshwater ecosystem (61.0%), water shortage (50%), agricultural solid waste problem (46.2%), water borne diseases (23.6%), illegal land clearing (21.7%), legal land clearing (15.1%), uncontrolled river water abstraction in upstream (54.7%)), poor solid waste management (34.0%), low awareness of local community (61.3%), haphazard planning and development (74.5%) and administration mistake (37.0%). Based on the PFA result, a total of four rotated factors were extracted, representing different aspects of water related issues in Cameron Highlands. Factor 1, 2, 3 and 4 were summarised to four topics namely: (1) water environment degradation caused by illegal solid waste disposal and low awareness of community, (2) agricultural development leading to negative impacts on water resources such as water shortage and ecosystem deterioration, (3) land clearing activity leading to serious land erosion (4) human health problem due to e-coli bacterial pollution and administration mistake on land development in Cameron Highlands. Key words: Descriptive analysis, principal factor analysis, local perception, water issues, cameron highlands. 1. Introduction Water governance is the administration system of economic, social and environmental that is in place to manage water resources and delivery of water services, at different levels of society [1]. Among the conditions required to develop good water governance are inclusiveness, accountability, participation, transpar- ency, predictability and responsiveness [2]. There are K.W. Tan (1980- ), male, MSc, research fields: integrated water resources management, water quality and environmental chemistry. E-mail: weng106@yahoo.com. Corresponding author: M.B. Mokhtar (1962- ), male, professor, Ph.D., research fields: integrated water resources management, ecosystem health, environmental chemistry, chemical management. E-mail: mazlin@ukm.my. growing arguments that governance of water resources can be more effective with broader public participation. As mentioned, inclusiveness, participation and transparency are elements required in achieving good water governance. In order to gain public participation, understanding the opinion from local community is important in order to achieve sustainable river basin development and should not be neglected from the planning process. However, community opinion survey always generates a large data set. This large and complex survey data is not easy to be interpreted and understood by decision maker. In order to overcome this difficulty, multivariate methods are applied to