A review of Malaysia solid waste management policies to improve recycling practice and waste separation among households

Households are the primary source that contributes to the municipal solid waste and thus, it is well justified that they should be targeted in waste recycling policies for the improvement of recycling rates in this nation. Aware of the significant role among the household, Malaysia has taken a series of initiative to improve the national policies for solid waste management to foster waste separation practices among household. These waste management policies focused on waste separation and waste recycling behaviour among households in Malaysia. This is because a well-managed and planned waste policy is one of the vital factors that will enhance waste separation and recycling behaviour among households. This paper attempts to summarise the waste management policies in Malaysia, chronologically and summarise the solid waste management and transformation plans in a timeline table for the ease of reference among future researcher and policymaker. This is to provide them with a better understanding of the progression of waste management policies and regulations in Malaysia

Gamification: motivating users’ energy conservation behaviour

The energy issues such as energy shortage, high energy price, environmental problems and so forth have long become the world concern. Previous research pointed that, energy issues are much related to human behaviour and subsequently can be improved through promotion of better energy use behaviour. Therefore, this paper intends to introduce a concept known as gamification, to motivate the engagement of the users in conserving energy through a fun and enjoyable environment. Gamification is defined as the use of game design elements in a non-game context to create a fun environment to promote particular behaviour. In game play environment, we can always see a common scenario of players tend to have high engagement and attachment to game playing. This is due to some elements in game context created the fun playing environment to the game players. So, gamification is a concept that intends to apply those elements that normally exist in game (which called game design elements) in the non-game context to create fun environment for promoting particular behaviour. Previously this concept has been proven effective in motivating the engagement of the users’ on particular behaviour. Thus researcher has carried out a preliminary review on previous relevant studies to identify the relevant game design element for application of gamification in energy saving context. This paper will present the most common game design elements extracted from previous relevant studies and few examples will be provided as a reference for application of gamification in promoting and motivating energy saving behaviour

Socioeconomic sustainability as environmental performance indicators

Environmental indicators are gaining importance for nation to measure quantitative evidence of environment conditions. Global Environmental Performance Index has established comprehensive indicators on measuring and tracking a country environmental performance. The two major objectives of Global EPI are to measure Environmental Public Health and Ecosystem Vitality performance. This paper intends to introduce and explain a new objective, known as Socioeconomic Sustainability that has been implemented in Malaysia EPI and highlights the rationale of having this objective. Later, the paper explains the new environmental performance policy category under the Socioeconomic Sustainability, including resource efficiency, environmental awareness and behaviour and environmental compliance. The paper concludes by outline the challenges associate with each new indicators

Acceptance of waste separation at source practice among households: a literature review

The successful of waste separation at source depends on the willingness and good practices among the residents. The participation rate of waste separation in Malaysia is low and there is an urgency to foster waste separation practice among the household. Considering that, the Separation at Source Initiative (SSI) under Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007 (Act 672), effective on September 2015 mandatory require the resident to separate waste in their dwelling, but the SSI still received resistance from the households. A careful investigation of the factors and barriers that motivate and prohibit the waste separation practice at source should be conducted, this required further investigation on multiple acceptance dimensions, including: socio-political, community, market, and technology. This paper explains the rationale to investigate the multiple acceptance dimensions for fostering waste separation practice among the household

Public environmental awareness and behaviour in Malaysia

Considering the causes of environmental degradation are mainly due to anthropogenic activities, this study aims to explore the need of indicating the social-psychological factors among Malaysians in qualifying the level of public environmental awareness and behaviour. A nationwide study has been conducted to examine environmental awareness and behaviour from 13 States and three Federal Territories. The result demonstrated current level of environmental awareness and behaviour among Malaysians, as according to the four categories; water pollution, air pollution, waste management and climate change

Public Environmental Awareness and Behaviour in Malaysia

Considering the causes of environmental degradation are mainly due to anthropogenic activities, this study aims to explore the need of indicating the social-psychological factors among Malaysians in qualifying the level of public environmental awareness and behaviour. A nationwide study has been conducted to examine environmental awareness and behaviour from 13 States and three Federal Territories. The result demonstrated current level of environmental awareness and behaviour among Malaysians, as according to the four categories; water pollution, air pollution, waste management and climate change.2398-4279 © 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, UniversitiTeknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Environmental Performance Index; Environmental Awareness; Environmental Behaviour; Malaysia

Local and global messages for prompting energy conservation behaviour: an experimental study in university

To create a cost effective environment during the management of building facilities, energy conservation is important among building users as it can help to conserve energy and reduce energy cost. To promote energy conservation, the behavior of user should be focused where their behavior should be improved to reduce energy wastage. Prompt is among the simplest and inexpensive behavioural interventions to improve energy conservation behavior. The prompt has been used wisely in healthcare sectors to promote healthy lifestyles, but no recent study on energy conservation behavior. The aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of prompt in prompting energy conservation behavior among the building users in university. An experiment was designed and carried out to examine the effectiveness of local and global types prompt messages for prompting efficiency use of energy. This research findings show that there was no significant difference between local and global types prompt messages, however, the findings indicate that both prompt messages were able to prompt the behavior change among the energy users and local type prompt message was more able to prompt the users than global types prompt messages. This finding could provide the useful information to society nowadays on using prompt to manage the energy efficiently

Development of metric evaluation for sustainable University

Awareness towards the enviroment by the university community has started since 1970 through various activities such as ‘Earth Day’celebration. The aim of such activities was to make sure that the university emphasized on the sustainanble practices among the community in preserving the enviroment. The initiative to transform the local university to a sustainable university has been carried out by a number of research universities, namely; UTM, UKM, USM, UPM, and UM. This can be seen in various efforts carried out by the university such as setting up research centre solely for the enviroment; carrying out activities for sustainable university, forming sustainability policy and etc. However all these efforts would be furtile if a metric was not used to measure the level of sustainability to evaluate through practices at the university. A research has been done to develop a metric evaluation for sustainable university that has characteristics of sustainability. This research is carried out by interviewing 13 sustainability experts who are well-werse in the field of social economy and enviroment. The outcome of the research are the characteristics and sub elements of a sustainable university together with a comprehensive metric evaluation. This metric evaluation will function as a bench mark to observe the initiative level of sustainability at UTM as well as other local universities. This metric would guide universities to assess the level of sustainability of the university

Healthcare facilities settings: an overview of environmentally-induced stress on health

The role of FM practitioners is to create an environment that sustains the primary objectives of the organisation. In managing healthcare facilities, the aim is to serve the healthcare users with efficient and quality medical environments in order to enhance the healing process. However, dysfunction that exists in environmental design is one of the issues often faced by the healthcare FM practitioners these days. Psychological stress is viewed as a consequence of design-behaviour dysfunction when the existing environmental design can no longer fit the need of users. With the possibility of certain environmental features to act as the sources of stressors, it is vital for FM practitioners to discover those features from the surrounding environment that appear to be harmful to the healthcare users. This paper provides an overview of the effect of the surrounding environment on stress. The association between environmentally induced-stress and the impacts of health is further discussed. Lastly, the application of evidence-based practice (EBP) is suggested in order to further the understanding for the association and intervention between environmental stressors and clinical outcomes

The effect of superstitious beliefs on property purchase intention

Superstitious belief is influencing decision-making process among the Chinese community, even though the effect of superstitious beliefs is declining by generations, however, previous literature has suggested that it is remained and inherited in the property purchasing decision process. Chinese community, which is the second large ethnic group in Malaysia, that their culture has been influencing by the local may still hold such believe when purchasing the property. This research intended to understand how the superstitious belief can influence their property purchasing intention, by testing within the context of psychological factors: attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, believe and past experience. A questionnaire survey is conducted at the property exhibition at Malacca, a state famous and rich with multiple culture in Malaysia. The Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modelling Method was used to test the hypothesis. The findings show that the buyers’ attitude, belief and perceived behavioral control significantly affect the buyers’ purchasing intention. Local developers and agents should realize that the superstitious beliefs will influence buyer’s purchasing decision and the understanding of superstitious behavior will help to enhance marketing process to stimulate residential property purchases are addressed