Agent-based Model for Environmental Awareness and Extended Producer Responsibility in Developing Countries

Abstract

To make an effective transition towards a circular economy, we must have the responsibility and active participation of all the stakeholders involved, including customers. In this work, we seek to develop an agent-based model to describe and analyze an environmental awareness system in a population, whose behavior is based on an indicator that can change by agent’s interaction and modify its consumption habits. The model is described using the ODD + D protocol, and we use Netlogo software for coding. After model validation process, its results are analyzed to understand how can environmental awareness level, consumption habits and social skills of each individual influence on the average environmental awareness level of a heterogeneous population, which makes simple the identification of emerging behaviors and the forecasting of the potentially recyclable waste according to the quality in the separation at source.