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The importance of achieving a high customer satisfaction with recycling services in communities

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Abstract

Some studies show that there are external, infrastructural, and economic factors that enable individuals and communities to act ecologically. A variable associated with sustainable behavior is the level of satisfaction with infrastructural and economic factors, which in turn relates to recycling behavior. The main aim of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the customer satisfaction with recycling scale and to analyze its relationship with sociodemographic variables (age and gender), house location (in the center or the suburbs, population size of), and psychological variables (self-reported individual recycling behaviors, general satisfaction with recycling service companies, and the perception of costs and the quality of service). A total of 1498 individuals responded to the in-home questionnaire related to these variables. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses confirm a good fit for a four-dimensional model: assurance, tangibles, empathy, and communication. Results show that those individuals who live in town centers tend to self-report higher levels of satisfaction with tangibles than those living in the suburbs. Population sizes correlate significantly and negatively with the four dimensions of service satisfaction, while age seems to relate significantly and negatively to all the studied variables. Finally, we discuss the implications regarding the importance of customer satisfaction in facilitating the environmentally responsible behavior.

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Acknowledgments

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/ or authorship of this article: This article was based on two research projects supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Grants PSI2009-07423 and PSI2014-58609-R in which Carmen Tabernero is the main researcher.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Córdoba, Avenida San Alberto Magno s/n, 14004, Córdoba, Spain

    Carmen Tabernero, Esther Cuadrado & Bárbara Luque

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Complesso di San Salvi, 50121, Florence, Italy

    Elisabetta Signoria & Roberto Prota

Authors
  1. Carmen Tabernero
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  2. Esther Cuadrado
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  3. Bárbara Luque
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  4. Elisabetta Signoria
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  5. Roberto Prota
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Correspondence to Carmen Tabernero.

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Tabernero, C., Cuadrado, E., Luque, B. et al. The importance of achieving a high customer satisfaction with recycling services in communities. Environ Dev Sustain 18, 763–776 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-015-9676-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-015-9676-4

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