Abstract
High participation rates by the public in authority projects are key in increasing resident recycling levels. Understanding waste separation behavior is crucial to achieving sustainable waste management within such household-based schemes. To identify the driving forces behind the seldom-discussed kitchen garbage separation behavior, five psychological factors, namely, attitude, perceived behavior control, subjective norms, moral norms, and responsibility denial, are established. Our data originate from a social study of Beijing citizens conducted in July 2013 (n = 362). Through structural equation modeling, we find that moral norms are consistently the most important predictor of household kitchen waste (KW) separation behavior. Subjective norms have a larger effect on such behavior than responsibility denial. Data analysis shows that perceived behavior control contributes significantly and independently to the explanation of such behavior. By contrast, attitude towards KW separation is found to be significantly negatively correlated with separation behavior. In conclusion, the model with direct and indirect effects of psychological factors explains 50.3% of the variance in household KW source separation behavior. Implications of the results for the promotion of household KW separation programs are discussed.
Highlights
It is a great challenge for governments to successfully manage household waste in city areas around the world
The results indicate that all proposed paths are statistically significant, except for that between attitude and behavior (Due to the theoretical importance of the influence of subjective norms towards household kitchen waste (KW) separation behavior, the attitude is still considered in the modified model.)
This study focuses on a lack of understanding topic of household KW separation behavior by investigating it through structural equation modeling (SEM)
Summary
It is a great challenge for governments to successfully manage household waste in city areas around the world. In this respect, source separation by the generator has been widely recognized as the crucial way for reducing, reusing, and recycling waste [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Several studies have recognized how household waste charges affect a household’s source separation behavior in developing countries, and most of the residents prefer household kitchen waste separation services with frequent, evening, plastic bag attributes and without instructors in big cities of developing countries [3,18]. Understanding the determinants of resident KW separation behavior are key for governments and decision makers to design more effective policies to involve more households join in household KW source separation program
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