IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v92y2014icp246-254.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wasting ways: Perceived distance to the recycling facilities predicts pro-environmental behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Lange, Florian
  • Brückner, Carolin
  • Kröger, Birte
  • Beller, Johannes
  • Eggert, Frank

Abstract

The present study aims at providing an improved understanding of the environmental factors affecting pro-environmental behavior. To this end, we introduce the economic concept of bounded rationality to the domain of recycling behavior, hypothesizing that the subjective costs of recycling are a better predictor of an individual's tendency to recycle than the objective costs. At the chosen study site, recyclables needed to be disposed of at collection centers distributed throughout the city, allowing for the analysis of recycling-related costs by assessing the distance between participants’ residence and the nearest collection center. Results from an online questionnaire completed by N=306 citizens indicate that the perceived distance to the recycling facilities is more closely related to recycling behavior than the actual distance. By means of hierarchical regression analyses, we demonstrate that the perceived distance explains unique variance in recycling behavior while the actual distance conveys only redundant information. Surprisingly, the predictive potential of participants’ distance estimates appeared to be significantly larger for recycling behavior than for recycling intention. The implications of our results are discussed with regard to potential opportunities to promote recycling behavior by targeting individuals’ biased perception of recycling-related costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Lange, Florian & Brückner, Carolin & Kröger, Birte & Beller, Johannes & Eggert, Frank, 2014. "Wasting ways: Perceived distance to the recycling facilities predicts pro-environmental behavior," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 246-254.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:92:y:2014:i:c:p:246-254
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.07.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344914001517
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.07.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hornik, Jacob & Cherian, Joseph & Madansky, Michelle & Narayana, Chem, 1995. "Determinants of recycling behavior: A synthesis of research results," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 105-127.
    2. Klöckner, Christian Andreas & Oppedal, Inger Olin, 2011. "General vs. domain specific recycling behaviour—Applying a multilevel comprehensive action determination model to recycling in Norwegian student homes," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 463-471.
    3. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    4. Ajzen, Icek, 1991. "The theory of planned behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 179-211, December.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Todd, Peter M. & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2003. "Bounding rationality to the world," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 143-165, April.
    7. Amy W. Ando & Anne Y. Gosselin, 2005. "Recycling in Multifamily Dwellings: Does Convenience Matter?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(2), pages 426-438, April.
    8. Davis, Georgina & Phillips, Paul S. & Read, Adam D. & Iida, Yuki, 2006. "Demonstrating the need for the development of internal research capacity: Understanding recycling participation using the Theory of Planned Behaviour in West Oxfordshire, UK," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 115-127.
    9. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    10. Daniel Kahneman, 2003. "Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1449-1475, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miaomei Guo & Weilun Huang, 2023. "Consumer Willingness to Recycle The Wasted Batteries of Electric Vehicles in the Era of Circular Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-20, February.
    2. Adu-Gyamfi, Gibbson & Asamoah, Ama Nyarko & Nketiah, Emmanuel & Obuobi, Bright & Adjei, Mavis & Cudjoe, Dan & Zhu, Bangzhu, 2023. "Reducing waste management challenges: Empirical assessment of waste sorting intention among corporate employees in Ghana," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    3. Chen, Hong & Chen, Feiyu & Huang, Xinru & Long, Ruyin & Li, Wenjie, 2017. "Are individuals’ environmental behavior always consistent?—An analysis based on spatial difference," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 25-36.
    4. Acuti, Diletta & Lemarié, Linda & Viglia, Giampaolo, 2023. "How to enhance the sustainable disposal of harmful products," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PB).
    5. Nketiah, Emmanuel & Song, Huaming & Adu-Gyamfi, Gibbson & Obuobi, Bright & Adjei, Mavis & Cudjoe, Dan, 2022. "Does government involvement and awareness of benefit affect Ghanaian's willingness to pay for renewable green electricity?," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 683-694.
    6. Elena Borasino & Hanna Fuhrmann-Riebel, 2022. "New Kids on the Recycling Block: the Role of Supermarkets and Bodegas for Sustainable Consumer Behaviour in Lima," Circular Economy and Sustainability,, Springer.
    7. Mengge Hao & Dongyong Zhang & Stephen Morse, 2020. "Waste Separation Behaviour of College Students under a Mandatory Policy in China: A Case Study of Zhengzhou City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-20, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zamri Ahmad & Haslindar Ibrahim & Jasman Tuyon, 2017. "Institutional investor behavioral biases: syntheses of theory and evidence," Management Research Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 40(5), pages 578-603, May.
    2. F. Knobloch & J. -F. Mercure, 2016. "The behavioural aspect of green technology investments: a general positive model in the context of heterogeneous agents," Papers 1603.06888, arXiv.org.
    3. Ralf Elbert & Lowis Seikowsky, 2017. "The influences of behavioral biases, barriers and facilitators on the willingness of forwarders’ decision makers to modal shift from unimodal road freight transport to intermodal road–rail freight tra," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(8), pages 1083-1123, November.
    4. Altman, Morris, 2014. "Insights from behavioral economics on how labor markets work," Working Paper Series 3466, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    5. Schwanen, Tim & Ettema, Dick, 2009. "Coping with unreliable transportation when collecting children: Examining parents' behavior with cumulative prospect theory," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 511-525, June.
    6. Hobman, Elizabeth V. & Frederiks, Elisha R. & Stenner, Karen & Meikle, Sarah, 2016. "Uptake and usage of cost-reflective electricity pricing: Insights from psychology and behavioural economics," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 455-467.
    7. Ardalan, Kavous, 2018. "Neurofinance versus the efficient markets hypothesis," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 170-176.
    8. Godbersen, Hendrik, 2021. "Let social capital (finally) be (economic) capital - Conceptualising, formalising and operationalising social capital," Arbeitspapiere der FOM 80, FOM Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management.
    9. Daniele Schilirò, 2012. "Bounded Rationality And Perfect Rationality: Psychology Into Economics," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 3(2), pages 99-108.
    10. Jason R. W. Merrick & Philip Leclerc, 2016. "Modeling Adversaries in Counterterrorism Decisions Using Prospect Theory," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(4), pages 681-693, April.
    11. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    12. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    13. Metcalfe, Robert & Dolan, Paul, 2012. "Behavioural economics and its implications for transport," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 503-511.
    14. Frederiks, Elisha R. & Stenner, Karen & Hobman, Elizabeth V., 2015. "Household energy use: Applying behavioural economics to understand consumer decision-making and behaviour," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 1385-1394.
    15. Víctor Alberto Pena & Alina Gómez-Mejía, 2019. "Effect of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic and optimism bias in stock market forecasts," Revista Finanzas y Politica Economica, Universidad Católica de Colombia, vol. 11(2), pages 389-409, November.
    16. Kavous Ardalan, 2018. "Behavioral attitudes toward current economic events: a lesson from neuroeconomics," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 53(4), pages 202-208, October.
    17. Schilirò, Daniele, 2011. "Economics and psychology.Perfect rationality versus bounded rationality," MPRA Paper 34292, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Soufian, Mona & Forbes, William & Hudson, Robert, 2014. "Adapting financial rationality: Is a new paradigm emerging?," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 25(8), pages 724-742.
    19. Schlüter, Maja & Baeza, Andres & Dressler, Gunnar & Frank, Karin & Groeneveld, Jürgen & Jager, Wander & Janssen, Marco A. & McAllister, Ryan R.J. & Müller, Birgit & Orach, Kirill & Schwarz, Nina & Wij, 2017. "A framework for mapping and comparing behavioural theories in models of social-ecological systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 21-35.
    20. Daniel Fonseca Costa & Francisval Carvalho & Bruno César Moreira & José Willer Prado, 2017. "Bibliometric analysis on the association between behavioral finance and decision making with cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring effect and confirmation bias," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1775-1799, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:92:y:2014:i:c:p:246-254. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.