Title: The determinants of non-consumption of disposable plastic: application of an extended theory of planned behaviour

Authors: Joaquim A. Casaca; Ana Loureiro

Addresses: Faculdade de Design, Tecnologia e Comunicação, IADE, Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação, UNIDCOM/IADE, Universidade Europeia, Av. D. Carlos I, 4, 1200-649 Lisbon, Portugal ' HEI-Lab: Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to explore a framework to predict the non-consumption of disposable plastics behaviour, using the theory of planned behaviour and a further extension adding two new variables to the model: social media engagement and lifestyle values. The empirical research builds on a survey with a sample of 466 individuals using an online questionnaire. Data analysis followed a PLS-SEM approach, to test the group of hypotheses. The group of predictors of social media engagement, lifestyle values, attitude, perceived behaviour control, and intention explain 39.7% of the variance of the expected behaviour of no-use of disposable plastic, which is considered a high value in the consumer behaviour domain. Together, the results show that the theory of planned behaviour proved its applicability in explaining social behaviour and that social media engagement is a very relevant predictor of lifestyle.

Keywords: sustainable consumption; disposable plastics; theory of planned behaviour; social media engagement; lifestyle; structural equation modelling; PLS-SEM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2024.135693

International Journal of Business Environment, 2024 Vol.15 No.1, pp.87 - 116

Received: 07 Feb 2022
Accepted: 21 Feb 2023
Published online: 22 Dec 2023 *