Role of Habit in Household Waste Recycling Behavior: Evidence from an Emerging Country

Abstract

This paper explores the inter-relationship between cognitive and non-cognitive factors that form an individual’s household recycling behavior. Habit, a noncognitive factor, is combined as an additional construct with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Data was collected from 467 eco-friendly consumers residing in economically emerging country- Bangladesh and analyzed using the partial least square-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Result showed significant direct impact of individual's habit and perceived behavioral control (PBC) on actual recycling behavior of household waste. When forming recycling intention, individual’s habit was found to be more dominant compared to the attitude, subjective norms and PBC. In addition, it was found that habit is significantly impacted by the PBC. However, the moderating role of habit towards the linkage of recycling intention to actual behavior was found insignificant. The paper provides significant contribution for the practitioners and policy makers to focus on forming individual habits to promote sustainable recycling behavior from an emerging country context.