Integrating the valence theory and the norm activation theory to understand consumers’ e-waste recycling intention

Electrical and electronic waste(e-waste)is a growing challenge,matching the widespread boom in the use of information and communication technology.Opposite to an alarming increasing amount of e-waste,a low rate of consumer engagement in ensuring the proper disposal of such materials intensifies the pressure on the exist‐ing e-waste crisis.To deal with this thorny problem,it is of great interest to grasp consumers’disposal and re‐cycling behavioral intentions.Therefore,this study attempts to understand complementary perspectives around consumers’e-waste recycling intention based on the integration of the valence theory and the norm activation theory.Four data mining models using classification and prediction-based algorithms,namely Chi squared automatic interaction detector(CHAID),Neural network,Discriminant analysis,and Quick,unbiased,efficient statistical tree(QUEST),were employed to analyze a set of the 398 data collected in Vietnam.The re‐sults revealed that the social support value is by far the most critical predictor,followed by the utilitarian value,task difficulty,and monetary risk.It is also noteworthy that the awareness of consequences,education background,the ascription of responsibility,and age were also ranked as critical affecting factors.The lowest influential predictors found in this study were income and gender.In addition,a comparison was made in terms of the classification performance of the four utilized data mining techniques.Based on several evalua‐tion measurements(confusion matrix,accuracy,precision,recall,specificity,F-measure,ROC curve,and AUC),the aggregated results suggested that CHAID and Neural network performed the best.The findings of this research are expected to assist policymakers and future researchers in updating all information surround‐ing consumer behavioral intention-related topics focusing on e-waste.Furthermore,the adoption of data min‐ing algorithms for prediction is another insight of this study,which may shed the light on data mining applica‐tions in such environmental studies in the future.

Data processing of small samples based on grey distance information approach

Data processing of small samples is an important and valuable research problem in the electronic equipment test. Because it is difficult and complex to determine the probability distribution of small samples, it is difficult to use the traditional probability theory to process the samples and assess the degree of uncertainty. Using the grey relational theory and the norm theory, the grey distance information approach, which is based on the grey distance information quantity of a sample and the average grey distance information quantity of the samples, is proposed in this article. The definitions of the grey distance information quantity of a sample and the average grey distance information quantity of the samples, with their characteristics and algorithms, are introduced. The correlative problems, including the algorithm of estimated value, the standard deviation, and the acceptance and rejection criteria of the samples and estimated results, are also proposed. Moreover, the information whitening ratio is introduced to select the weight algorithm and to compare the different samples. Several examples are given to demonstrate the application of the proposed approach. The examples show that the proposed approach, which has no demand for the probability distribution of small samples, is feasible and effective.