Constraining factors in the propensity to manage household wastes: The effects of predispositions and resources

Abstract

Waste management is a fundamental ecological issue that is impacted by attitudes and behavior of householders. The purposes of this research are: (1) to analyze the relative contributions of a number of the determinants of the intent to engage in household waste management behavior (recycling, reuse, reduction), and (2) to test the theoretical model of household waste management adjustment to explore whether the model provides a general theoretical framework for understanding household waste management adjustment behavior. Do resource, predisposition, knowledge, and market constraints constrain or facilitate the belief in the household waste management problem, existing waste management conditions, satisfaction with those conditions, and the intent to engage in future household waste management adjustment behavior?

The sample was a randomly selected sample of 1000 Nebraska households; 494 questionnaires were returned. A total sample of 474 was used for the initial data analysis. A subsample of 373 for inferential statistics resulted based on listwise procedures for missing cases. Path analysis was conducted using multiple regression.

The major findings include: (1) the household waste management adjustment model serves moderately well in the explanation of the intent to adjust waste management practices, (2) predisposition constraints, as a group of variables, are key contributors to the variance in intent to manage waste, (3) higher levels of market constraints facilitate the belief in the existence and seriousness of the household waste problem, and inhibit the household waste management satisfaction, (4) knowledge of waste management is positively associated with belief in the waste management problem and existing waste management conditions, and (5) normative constraints influence belief in the household waste management problem and existing household waste management conditions. Belief and existing household waste management conditions, as intervening variables in the model, help explain the effects of the exogenous variables (resource, predisposition, market and knowledge constraints) on the variables satisfaction with the waste management conditions and the intent to manage household waste in the future. This research contributes to the body of literature focusing on attitude and behavioral intent.