Factors Influencing Upcycling for UK Makers

Abstract

Changing consumer behaviour can reduce environmental impacts. Upcycling is one of the understudied yet promising, environmentally sustainable behaviours that has the potential to contribute to the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by exploring factors influencing upcycling for UK makers. The study employed a survey based on Triandis’s theory of interpersonal behaviour and Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour. The survey results revealed key determinants of upcycling as attitude, intention, and subjective norm, and demographic characteristics of people who are more likely to upcycle frequently as females aged 30+ working in art and design. The paper further discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the study.

Developing Interventions for Scaling Up UK Upcycling

“…It is the process of utilising used or waste materials, components and products to create a product of higher quality or value than the compositional elements [15,21]. Upcycling is often understood as a collective term incorporating 'creative' forms of reuse, repurpose, repair, refurbishment, upgrade, remanufacturing and recycling [14,22]. (Recycling is often in fact down-cycling, as the current dominant process downgrades the quality and value of the materials by mixing different materials and/or adding other materials or chemicals (e.g., mixed-up melt of aluminium) [23].…”

“…The theoretical framework to explore factors influencing upcycling was Triandis's theory of interpersonal behaviour [85]. Most questions regarding the factors influencing upcycling were based on this theory, which has advantages and disadvantages [14]. A minor change was made as follows.…”

“…Factors in a combination model ( Figure 4) between Triandis's theory of interpersonal behaviour (TIB) [85] and Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (TPB) [90] were used for survey questions, described in our previous paper [14]. The combination model has attitude, three social factors (subjective norm, personal norm and role beliefs) and perceived behaviour control as determinants of intention, and intention and perceived facilitating conditions as determinants of behaviour.…”

“…Eight options were provided for the frequency of behavior. See our previous paper [14] for survey questions and answer options.…”

“…The study focused on household upcycling. This paper utilises data described in greater detail in our previous paper on the study [14] and the lead author's Ph.D. thesis [15].…”