Recycling and Waste Management

Waste generation is primarily rooted in consumer behaviors. Lifetime of a device is determined from the interaction between users’ characteristics and a product’s functional lifetime. This study investigates the lifetime of home appliances across countries and clarifi es the determinant of the length of lifetimes. Understanding how a social background links to the products’ lifetime can provide useful implications for resource effi ciency improvement. To estimate the determinants of the lifetime of home appliances, an empirical analysis was conducted using house living standard survey data for developing countries from the World Bank. Logistic regression model was designed for three home appliances- television, refrigerator and PC with a total of 13,619 households’ samples of Bulgaria, Albania, Panama and Nigeria. Th e results showed that households in Bulgaria and Albania tend to hold on to the appliances for signifi cantly longer than households in other countries. Among the demographic variables of household, education, region and age show signifi cant and consistent effect on the lifetime of all the appliances, whilst income, family member, dwelling type and marital status have only weaker eff ect on limited appliances. It was found that the lifetime of home appliances diff ers considerably across countries. Countries which had once been governed by communist regime display tendency to hold on to the appliances for longer period of time. Moreover, a country’s communist experience has even stronger eff ect on lengthening appliance’s lifetime than its economic scale. It is noticeable that this behavior, which had once been formed under a severe planned economy system, is still observed. Further research is recommended to assess the product lifetime in countries which had experienced communist regime yet with developed economy or of non-European state. This may clarify the relative magnitude of communist effect which still resides in consumer behavior to a country’s economic scales on product lifetime.