The Influence of Social Norms and Environmental Regulations on Rural Households’ Pesticide Packaging Waste Disposal Behavior

Abstract

The agricultural ecological environment provides an important resource guarantee for social development. The extensive management mode of agriculture in China has not fundamentally changed; the contradiction between production and governance is still prominent, and the management of agricultural surface pollution has a long way to go. Based on the data from 572 rural households in Jiangxi province, this paper uses the Ordered Logit, 2SLS, and the moderation effect model to analyze the mechanism between social norms (SNs) and rural households’ (RHs) disposal of pesticide packaging waste (PPW) and to test the moderation effect of environmental regulation (ER) in the influence path of SN to RHs’ disposal of PPW. The results show that (1) descriptive norms and directive norms promote RHs not littering PPW; the probability of RHs not littering PPW increases by 4.0% for each unit decrease in descriptive norms, and the probability of RHs not littering PPW increases by 12.1% when there are directive norms, but the directive norms are more significant than the descriptive norms. Consistent conclusions were obtained after the robustness test and endogeneity treatment. (2) Reputational incentives strengthen the promotional effect of directive norms on RHs’ behavior of not littering PPW; punitive regulations hinder the promotional effect of descriptive norms on RHs’ behavior of not littering PPW. Based on the findings of the study, the following policy recommendations are put forward: Actively cultivate SNs and give full play to their role in promoting RHs’ choice of the disposal behavior of PPW; improve the role of ER in regulating RHs’ choice of the disposal behavior of PPW; guide the ER and SNs to work in coordination.