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This research aims to explore the role of awareness of harm and responsibility for environmental protection in reducing pollution from single-use plastic bags (SPBs) in coastal communities (CCs). To this end, this study develops and tests a unique model that explains residents’ intention to reduce the use of SPBs in coastal regions.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from 721 coastal residents in Vietnam. Structural equation modeling and moderation analysis were applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that awareness of the impact of SPBs on the environment and human health and awareness of the responsibility to protect the coastal environment significantly affect attitudes and intentions to reduce the use of SPBs. Moreover, such awareness of responsibility strengthens the attitude-intention relationship.

The findings suggest that CCs should not receive a lower priority in campaigns and efforts to reduce SPBs. In this regard, providing residents with free environmentally friendly bags and education programs on the impact of SPBs could be implemented.

CCs are directly impacted by pollution from SPBs. However, little is known about how this affects their polluting behavior. This study shows that CCs are not immune to polluting behaviors and that SPBs can be significant among residents. It also demonstrates that awareness of harm and feeling responsible for the environment are essential drivers of (intended) sustainable behaviors.

This paper aims to describe the effects of 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle) waste management initiatives on a campus community. It ascertains the environmental attitudes and opinions of the residents and investigates their behavioral responses to waste management initiatives. Practical implications for enhancing sustainable waste management are discussed in this paper.

Demonstration projects on waste segregation and recycling, as well as waste a reduction campaign, were set up on the campus to ascertain people’s attitudes and investigate their behavioral responses toward 3R practices. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey, observations, interviews and the project’s document review. A waste audit and waste composition analysis was carried out to assess waste flows and actual waste management behaviors and measure the change in the recycling rate.

3R waste management initiatives had positive effects on people’s attitudes about resources, waste management and consciousness of the need to avoid waste, but these initiatives did not affect recycling and waste management behavior. A voluntary approach-only cannot bring about behavioral change. Incentive measures showed a greater positive effect on waste reduction to landfills. Nevertheless, the demonstration projects helped to increase the overall campus recycling from 10 to 12 per cent.

This paper addresses a literature gap about the 3R attitudes and resulting behavior as part of campus sustainability of higher education institutions in a developing country. The authors’ results revealed hurdles to be overcome and presents results that can be compared to behavioral responses of people from other developed countries. These findings can be used as a guide for higher education institution’s policy-makers, as they indicate that voluntary instruments alone will not yield effective results, and other mechanisms that have an impact on people's behavior are required.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South Indian town.

Field research was exploratory, based on snowball sampling and urban traversing. The analysis follows capital and labour in the sub-circuits of capital generating waste in production, distribution, consumption, the production of labour and the reproduction of society.

Regardless of legal regulation, which is selectively enforced, formal contracts are limited to active inspection regimes; direct transactions with or within the state; and long-distance transactions. Formal labour contracts are least incomplete for state employment, and for relatively scarce skilled labour in the private sector.

The research design does not permit quantified generalisations.

Waste management technology evaluations neglect the social costs of displacing a large informal labour force.

While slowly dissolving occupational barriers of untouchability, the waste economy is a low-status labour absorber of last resort, exit from which is extremely difficult.

The first systematic exploration of formal and informal contracts in an Indian small-town waste economy.