Association rule mining of household expenditure survey in Malaysia by using Apriori algorithm.

Analysis on finding patterns of household expenditures including the relationships between various household characteristics and family consumptions is important. This is because the behaviours of household expenditures affect economic developments and policy planning of a country. This paper explores characteristics of households with different levels of household expenditures to determine characteristics of consumers in Malaysia. Drawing from the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) done by the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the relationships between all variables in the household expenditure survey are extracted by using an association rules mining algorithm which is the Apriori algorithm. Association rules mining method is proposed in this study to gather hidden information in the survey since it is able to identify combinations of variables that occur concurrently in large dataset. The Apriori algorithm is chosen because it is simple and easy to execute. The study shows that there are significant relationships between the characteristics of a household with their total expenditures based on chi-squared test. Family size, education background and marital status are all important factors influencing household expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]