Citizen Profiles of Residual Waste Separation Behaviour

The impact of human behaviour on climate change is getting more apparent every day. Citizens are encouraged and sometimes forced to change their waste separation behaviour to reduce their effect on this global challenge. One way to achieve this is to reduce the amount of fine and bulky residual waste that ends in landfill or is incinerated. Studies show that this can be achieved by active, efficient, and correct household participation. Multiple intervention strategies are being tried out, while the European Union statistics show that the numbers are not at the desired level yet. To improve the waste separation practices, understanding the motivation and drivers of (correct) waste separation behaviour is of high importance for the current strategies' success. In this paper, based on the Self-Determination Theory, we propose "citizen-profiling" framework, which consists of six citizen profiles, that illustrates citizens' motivations and drivers of residual waste separation behaviour. We end this paper, with discussions on motivating the citizens to contribute to waste separation actively.