No abstract

The acceleration of growth in the population in Saudi Arabia and the increase in municipal solid waste generation have caused a problem in Dammam city: an increase in solid waste production. Therefore, solid waste sorting is an important practice of municipal solid waste management. The main objectives in this research are understanding the effect of internal and external factors on household willingness in sorting waste in Dammam city and studying the attempts to construct a theoretical research model by adding market incentives, government facilitators, and awareness into the popular planned behaviour theory to explain residents’ waste sorting intentions. The data collection and analysis are based on the questionnaire study, which is based on the questionnaire survey data from 450 households in Dammam. This study revealed that social influence significantly predicts households’ willingness to sort and recycle, that is, to promote recycling. Additionally, the variable social influence has a significant but low influence on households’ willingness to sort and recycle. The result of the structural equation model shows that perceived behavioural control significantly predicts households’ willingness to sort and recycle waste. This finding is consistent with the theoretical expectation. Therefore, this research shows that attitude, social influence, perceived behavioural control, market incentives, government facilitators and awareness positively and significantly affect residents’ waste sorting intentions. Additionally, this research corroborates the discrepancy between internal and external variables.

While the total amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Dammam city was about 13 million tons in 2013, it is expected to reach about 18.4 million tons in 2025. Although the main problem in Dammam city is an increase in solid waste production without any formal treatment except landfilling, the lack of waste segregation greatly affects the residents’ handling practices of solid waste due to incorrect disposing practices. The objective of this study explored the possibility of Dammam residents’ participation in sorting and recycling to improve MSW handling and to measure the influence of psychological factors which affecting residents’ willingness to participate in waste handling regarding socioeconomic levels and moderating effects. This study also examined various respondents’ perspectives on sorting and recycling sustainable waste and the handling of waste generation. This study covered most Dammam communities, with a gender distribution of 56% males and 44% females and the monthly income ranging from SR700 to SR12,000. The descriptive analysis showed that of the 450 participants, 170 (37.8%) were in the middle-income levels, 199 (44.2%) were in the high-income levels and 81 (18%) were in the low-income levels. The moderating effect of income was observed between attitude and willingness to sort and recycle waste in the low-income levels and high-income levels groups. Additionally, an association was found between market incentives and willingness to sort and recycle waste in the low-income levels and high-income levels groups. The gender status of the participants had a moderating effect on the relationship between market incentives and willingness to sort and recycle waste in males and females. Additionally, the moderating effect of social influence on households’ willingness to sort and recycle waste was moderated by gender in males and females.