Journal of Cleaner Production

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Antecedents of urban residents’ separate collection intentions for

household solid waste and their willingness to pay: Evidence from

China

Zhaohua Wang

, Xiaoyang Dong

, Jianhua Yin

School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Center for Energy &Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles in Beijing, Beijing 100081, China

School of Business, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China

article info

Article history:

Received 20 April 2016

Received in revised form

20 September 2016

Accepted 30 September 2016

Available online 30 September 2016

Keywords:

Household solid waste

Antecedents

Separate collection intentions

Willingness to pay

abstract

Rapid mass migration into cities and economic growth have created various problems of sustainability.

The increasing household solid waste, bringing about environmental pollution and land occupation, is

among the concerns and separate collection is recognised as a sound way to dispose it. However,

separate collection behaviours are not common in China, and the research into the dynamics of urban

residents’ separate collection intentions for household solid waste is scarce. For ﬁlling this gap, we

extend the theory of planned behaviour to explore the antecedents of separate collection intentions for

household solid waste and identify their effects on residents’ willingness to pay for separate collection by

other organisations. The results show that separate collection intentions towards household solid waste

are signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced by the behaviours of others, facility conditions, and moral obligations, while

their willingness to pay for separate collection is also affected by age, perceptions of results and gov-

ernment policies. In conclusion, urban residents’willingness to pay is more sensitive to perceptions of

results and policy implications than separate collection intentions in China. Accordingly, the government

should provide a pro-environmental climate, convenient facilities, detailed cases, cultivate environ-

mental moral obligations and propose appropriate promotional and incentive policies for different

recycling modes.

1. Introduction

Accompanying the rapid economic growth and urbanization

process, massive municipal sustainable development issues have

arisen, among which urban waste management is a great concern

(Chong et al., 2016). Over 1.3 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste

are produced worldwide each year, bringing enormous challenges

for urban waste disposal (Welivita et al., 2015). Household solid

waste occupies a signiﬁcant part of urban waste (Hering, 2012;

Swami et al., 2011). As for China, problems of urban household

waste are likewise impeding socio-economic development. The

delivered quantity of household solid waste is rising year-by-year,

most of which is handled by way of landﬁll and incineration

(Fig. 1). By 2014, there were 604 national landﬁll sites in China

(Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, 2014), occu-

pying a lot of land and polluting both land and the surrounding

groundwater systems. In addition, in 2014, there were 188 incin-

eration plants (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development,

2014). These plants produce poisonous gases such as dioxins (LAN,

2010) and cause a serious waste of resources and environmental

pollution problems (Gu et al., 2014; Zabaleta and Rodic, 2015).

An economic system circular economy is promoted worldwide

to increase resource use efﬁciency and achieve a better balance of

economy, environment and society. The residents’ separation

collection of household solid waste embodies circular economy in

reduce, reuse and recycle from consumers’ responsibility perspec-

tive, improving the entire living and economic model (Ghisellini

et al., 2016). Household solid waste includes food waste, recy-

clable waste such as paper, glass, metal, hazardous waste including

batteries, pesticide containers, and other solid waste (Liu et al.,

*Corresponding author. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute

of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.

E-mail address: wangzh1018@hotmail.com (Z. Wang).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.09.223

Journal of Cleaner Production 173 (2018) 256e264

2015), among which the recyclable component can reach 89.3% (Gu

et al., 2015). Separate waste collection facilitates the reduction of

greenhouse gas emissions and waste volumes (Calabr

o, 2009; Geng

et al., 2009). Meanwhile, conventional resources can be conserved

and heat can be generated through waste-to-energy process

(Agovino et al., 2016; Cucchiella et al., 2014). In the context of cir–

cular economy, waste separate collection not only lays the foun-

dation for waste reuse but also works as a sustainability indicator

(Chong et al., 2016; Rigamonti et al., 2016). Total weight of waste by

type and disposal, weight of transported, imported, exported, or

treated waste deemed hazardous under the terms of the Basel

Convention Annex I, II, and VIII, and percentage of transported

waste shipped internationally are indicator measures of Global

Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (GRI

Guidelines); toxic emission and waste, along with packaging ma-

terial and waste are Environmental Social and Governance (ESG)

key issues of Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) ESG

research; some other standards like ISO 14001 and ISO 14031

consider waste management as important ratings (GRI, 2014; MSCI,

2015; Rahdari and Anvary Rostamy, 2015). Consequently, organi-

sations and cities attach great importance to waste recycling, aimed

at achieving business goals and gaining competitive advantages

through improved reputations, efﬁciencies of organisations and

improved conﬁdence of stakeholders (ISO, 2015). For example,

Ben’s &Jerry’s plant applies Chunkinator to digesting all the ice

cream waste from the plant, satisfying roughly 20% of its energy

needs and Unilever are increasingly using post-consumer recycled

materials in their plastic bottles. In short, waste recycling can make

a better world economy and environment, and separate collection

of household solid waste is the fundamental and meaningful re-

sponsibility from the consumer aspect.

To promote and standardise the classiﬁcation, collection,

transportation, and disposal of urban waste, the Chinese Govern-

ment introduced a series of policies and regulations, such as: Law of

the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of

Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste,Regulations on the Admin-

istration of Municipal Appearance and Environmental Sanitation,

Administrative Measures for Urban Living Garbage, and so on. Be-

sides, China released The General Planning for National Municipal

Solid Waste Disposal Facilities Construction During the 12th Five-Year

Plan Period in 2012. It requires that domestic waste classiﬁcation

pilots should be promoted nationwide in 2015, and China should

establish a near-perfect supervision system for municipal solid

waste disposal. However, Chinese residents’ awareness of house-

hold solid waste separation and collection is still weak (Gu et al.,

2015), the recovery rate of the municipal solid waste is less than

2% in China (Zhang et al., 2016), and waste classiﬁcation pilots run

with difﬁculty. In addition, low recovery rates of household solid

waste are common elsewhere: for example, the recovery rates of

Germany and Austria are 60%e70%, Australia, Belgium, Holland,

and Sweden manage about 50%, the United States, Britain, France,

and Italy are at 30%e40%, and Iran and Turkey reach less than 10%

(Environmental Protection Agency, 2012; European Environment

Agency, 2013; Hyder Consulting, 2011; Pakpour et al., 2014).

In face of the negative current situation of household solid waste

separation and collection, some scholars come to focus on the

formation mechanism of recycling behaviours with regard to

household solid waste. Wan et al. (2014) combined the theory of

planned behaviour with norm-activation theory, concluding that

recycling intentions were inﬂuenced by perceived policy effec-

tiveness in Hong Kong. Pakpour et al. (2014) applied the extended

theory of planned behaviour and found that attitudes, subjective

norms, perceived behavioural control, moral obligations, self-

identify, intention, action planning, and past behaviour signiﬁ–

cantly predicted household waste collection behaviours in Iran.

Crociata et al. (2015) used a probit model and identiﬁed that cul-

ture, and participation dimensions inﬂuenced recycling behaviours.

Alpízar and Gsottbauer (2015) identiﬁed that reputational concerns

played a role in shaping pro-environmental behaviours through

experiments.

Questionnaires or experiments are used to study the factors

inﬂuencing residents’recycling behaviours; however, researchers

seldom talk about inﬂuences of government policies, surrounding

facilities, and demographic variables on the separate collection

intentions for household solid waste, especially with regard to the

intentions of Chinese urban households. Meanwhile, residents pay

the government for its waste handling and separate collection be-

haviours, which is a potential measure for use in promoting sepa-

rate collection of household solid waste while few scholars have

researched this ﬁeld. This research aims to improve the situations

in these aspects.

We take Chinese urban households as an example, and propose

two kinds of household solid waste recycling scenarios: the ﬁrst

involves urban residents themselves classifying and recycling

household solid waste; the second involves urban residents paying

other organisations to implement separate collection of household

solid waste. In this research, we extend the theory of planned

behaviour with government policies, facility conditions, and

Fig. 1. China’s household solid waste treatment capacity.

Source: China Urban Construction Statistical Yearbook, 2014.

All the abbreviations in this paper and their full names are summarized in

Appendix C.

Z. Wang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 173 (2018) 256e264 257

demographic variables, discuss antecedents of separation collec-

tion intention and antecedents of households’willingness to pay

for separation collection, and expect to provide a theoretical

reference for the construction of recycling modes and policies.

2. Conceptual model development

Residents’separate collection behaviours and their willingness

to pay belong to pro-environmental behaviours. According to pre-

vious research, we apply the theory of planned behaviour to

exploring inﬂuencing factors and extend the basic framework of

the theory of planned behaviour.

2.1. The theory of planned behaviour

The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) is often applied to pro-

environmental behaviour analysis (de Leeuw et al., 2015; Masud

et al., 2016). It provides a useful model and a framework for sys-

tematically exploring the factors which inﬂuence householders’

recycling decisions (Taylor and Todd, 1995; Tonglet et al., 2004a).

Hence, we have chosen TPB as the theoretical basis to investigate

how factors affect household waste separation and collection in-

tentions. In this theory, intentions can be predicted from attitudes

atmosphere, forming social pressure (or cohesion) to some extent

(Moh and Abd Manaf, 2014; Murakami et al., 2015). So in this

research, the government measures part is added to test the effects

of government policies on residents’household solid waste sepa-

ration and collection intentions in China, which is claimed to be

novel.

Perceived behavioural control means the perceived ease or

difﬁculty of performing the behaviour, assumed to reﬂect past

experience as well as anticipated impediments and obstacles. In

previous research, scholars use items such as: “It is up to me

whether or not I recycle household waste every time I have it for

disposal”to measure perceived behavioural control, which in-

dicates global control perception (Pakpour et al., 2014). However,

infrastructure conditions should be considered in any practice

analysis (Liu et al., 2016). Therefore, the facility conditions for

separately collecting household solid waste are involved in this

extended TPB model, making its measurements more objective.

Separate collection intentions, in this work, are assumed to

capture the motivational factors inﬂuencing separation collection

behaviours, indicating how hard people are willing to work in

sorting and recycling household waste, and how much of an effort

they are planning to exert to recycle household solid waste (Ajzen,

1991).

In addition, demographic variables including age, gender, and

Z. Wang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 173 (2018) 256e264258