Abstract
Based on expectancy valence theory, people’s behavior is affected by their self-perception and the external environment. In rural China, policy instruments as robust external environment factors have a strong effect on waste separation behavior (WSB). The purpose of the paper is to explore the influencing mechanism of policy instruments (infrastructure and information) on perceived value (perceived benefit and perceived cost) and waste separation behaviors. The data were collected from 689 rural households of Shaanxi province in China, and analyzed by using structural equation model (SEM). According to the results, the mediation effect proves that policy instruments not only can affect WSB directly but also can affect it indirectly through the perceived value. Specifically, information and infrastructure influence the perceived benefit positively and the perceived cost negatively, and information and infrastructure have an indirect effect on WSB through the mediation effect of the perceived cost. Second, policy instruments have a stronger effect on rural people’s waste separation behavior than perceived value. Specifically, infrastructure has the most important impact on waste separation behavior, followed by information and then perceived cost. Third, the perceived cost is significantly negatively related to WSB, and perceived benefit has a positive effect but is statistically insignificant. It has a practical implication for the government. Providing sufficient infrastructure and launching effective information activities could improve the perceived benefit including biospheric, egoistic, social-altruistic, and reputation; and reduce the perceived cost of time, physical, learning, and money, which could then induce rural households to engage in WSB.
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Published by China Environmental Protection Online at http://www.hbzhan.com
“Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” for the comprehensive improvement of rural environment issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Finance of China in 2017.
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Funding
This research was funded by the Shaanxi Science and Technology Department, general items of Shaanxi Soft Science (2019KRM177), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71773094).
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Ying Ma contributed to paper designing, collecting, and analyzing the questionnaire; Huiling Wang contributed to data collecting and analysis; and Rong Kong contributed to the paper revisions.
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Ma, Y., Wang, H. & Kong, R. The effect of policy instruments on rural households’ solid waste separation behavior and the mediation of perceived value using SEM. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 19398–19409 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08410-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08410-2