Korean household waste management and recycling behavior Seunghae Lee a, * , Hae Sun Paik b a College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, United States b Korea Land & Housing Corporation, Land & Housing Institute, Daejeon Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea article info Article history: Received 30 September 2010 Received in revised form 29 November 2010 Accepted 2 December 2010 Available online 10 December 2010 Keywords: Recycling policy Waste management Korea Recycling behavior Environmental attitude NEP abstract The rapid industrial and economic development in the recent several decades has caused serious environmental problems in Korea. The country has very limited carrying capacity; the population density in Korea is 481 people per km 2 , ranking the third-highest in the world [1]. In 1995, the Korean government implemented a volume-based waste fee system (unit pricing system) that required every household to purchase certified plastic bags for waste disposal [2]. Consequently, since the introduction of this regulation, household solid waste in Korea has been substantially decreased, and household recycling has been increased. This study is to examine current Korean household recycling and waste management behavior and explore factors that affect those behaviors. Data was gathered though a survey conducted in Seoul, Korea. For the data analysis, 196 responses were used. The impacts of several factors on recycling and waste management behaviors including NEP (New Environmental Paradigm), attitudes for recycling and waste management, and the respondents’ demographic variables were examined. To analyze the data, correlations and multiple regressional analyses were conducted using SPSS 16. The results showed that environmental attitudes affected recycling and waste manage- ment behaviors significantly along with several demographic variables. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction As environmental concerns increase worldwide, there have been efforts to develop creative ways to manage and control Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) effectively. MSW is defined as garbage that comes mainly from homes. Some additions are when garbage from businesses is similar in its characteristics to household garbage. This definition follows the Korean government’s MSW definition for the unit pricing system policy [3]. For delivering environmen- tally sustainable environment and housing, it is important to recognise the sustainable housing characteristics such as afford- ability, accessibility, energy efficiency, waste management, security, etc [4]. Designing and creating the conditions of environmental sustainability may facilitate the well-being of people and their attachment to their place of living [5]. Korea has been through rapid industrial and economic develop- ment, causing serious environmental problems including disposal of MSW. It is a particularly important issue in Korea due to its limited carrying capacity. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) described the status of the MSW generation and sug- gested the preferred order of waste management methods for the environmentally sound MSW management and control [6]. EPA listed source reduction as the most preferred method, recycling and composting as the next, and disposal in combustion facilities and landfills as the last. See the waste management method hierarchy in Fig. 1 that was redrawn based on the EPA waste management hier- archy [6]. A study on the construction waste recycling system in Hong Kong showed that mandatory regulation and legislations imple- mented by the government is needed to control the waste recycling management and to control environment attitudes in the construc- tion industry. The study stressed on the importance of the mature recycling environment as well [7]. In the 1990s, the Korean government recognized the pressing needs to reduce MSW at the source and foster the recycling of reusable materials as it becomes increasingly difficult to secure or procure properties to dump MSW or build facilities to dispose of it properly. It was mainly due to the prevalent Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) syndrome and the stiff increase in land values. The volume-based waste fee system (unit pricing system) has been finally implemented in 1995 along with the previous establish- ments of related policies in order to alleviate the environmental impact and conditions that the issue of MSW brought about [2]. This pricing system requires every household to purchase certi- fied plastic bags for waste disposal while the disposal of the sepa- rated recyclables can be disposed of free of charge. All recyclable packaging materials are required to be marked clearly, and recy- clable wastes are supposed to be separated into paper, plastic, metal, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 765 494 0556; fax: þ1 765 496 2076. E-mail address: Lee30@purdue.edu (S. Lee). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Building and Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/buildenv 0360-1323/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2010.12.005 Building and Environment 46 (2011) 1159e1166