Reframing Recycling Behaviour through Consumers’ Perceptions: An Exploratory Investigation

Abstract

Despite the increasing awareness of the consequences of waste, there is no consensus on how and why consumers engage in recycling, making it challenging to design behavioural interventions that might promote recycling, especially in organisational settings. This study is designed to explain consumers’ recycling behaviour and how it differs across contexts, particularly between home and work settings. Using personal accounts of 367 employees from different organisations in the UK, this study explores recycling behaviour at home and work including its motivations and barriers. The findings show that recycling behaviour is different across contexts due to many disparate factors underlying people’s waste generation and recycling behaviours from one context to another. According to the findings, buying and consumption behaviour and waste generation patterns influence the way consumers engage in recycling. The study further demonstrates that contextual factors and individual circumstances are important contributors to consumption behaviour, waste production, and recycling behaviour. While recycling behaviour has been investigated extensively, the findings of this study indicate the need for consumption and waste production patterns to be taken into consideration when designing recycling interventions, enhancing the prospect of a circular economy. This study contributes to theory and practice by associating recycling behaviour with buying and consumption behaviour, including waste generation patterns.

Designing effective waste management practices in developing economies: The case of Suriname

“…As a result, waste management studies have identified many factors, such as attitudes (Hu et al 2021), environmental values, and social norms (Vassanadumrongdee and Kittipongvises, 2018), information (Wang et al 2019), and social-economic status (Tassie Wegedie 2018), influencing consumers' behavior. While these factors have been conceptualized and operationalized by authors when explaining waste management behaviors, results are often mixed and mostly inconclusive, leading to the disparities in how waste management initiatives are designed and implemented across different local authorities/councils (Oke et al 2021b;Sewak et al 2021). According to Oke et al (2021a), shifting waste management responsibility to consumers will not address the current waste management issues without understanding people's consumption behavior and personal situation.…”

Frugal or Sustainable? The Interplay of Consumers’ Personality Traits and Self-Regulated Minds in Recycling Behavior

“…People consume products, food, and services through the process of purchasing, using, and disposing of them [1]. Past literature has indicated that modern consumers are becoming more environmentally aware and endeavor to recycle discarded products instead of simply throwing them away [2][3][4]. Researchers have generated a wealth of insights regarding the production of sustainable products that are less harmful to the environment [5][6][7], but it is also important to understand how products are discarded or recycled after consumption to allow us to rethink consumption and waste following the product lifecycle [8][9][10].…”

Sustainable Communication in the B2C Market—The Impact of Packaging

“…The information value of packaging plays also a crucial role in shaping the recycling behaviour of consumers, therefore proactive efforts are globally being made by researchers to improve the knowledge in this area [41][42][43][44][45]. The results of several works highlight the potential of packaging as an initiator of waste-sorting activity and indicate its impact on recycling effectiveness.…”