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Littering has been identified as a significant social issue in India that has negative impact on the environment as well as public health. Social marketing is a powerful tool for changing and sustaining pro-environmental behaviors, but so far no research has been found on the application of social marketing on changing littering behavior in India. This paper aims to integrate the two widely used social marketing models, health belief model (HBM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB), with an extra factor, environmental factors, in a holistic model to understand and predict anti-littering behavior in India.

In total, 750 individuals were interviewed at 34 locations across the states of New Delhi and Punjab (India) in a field survey. For data analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model techniques in AMOS 21.0 have been used.

The results of the study suggest that the perceived benefits and perceived barriers have a significant direct effect on the attitude toward anti-littering behavior. No direct impact of perceived threat has been found on attitude toward anti-littering behavior. The results also confirm the role of attitude, subjective norms and self-efficacy in influencing the anti-littering intention with attitude and subjective norms having a greater impact on intention as compared to self-efficacy. Furthermore, the results also highlight that the environmental factors and intention carry more weights than perceived behavioral control in influencing anti-littering behavior. Recognizing the importance of sequential mediators in the present study, the results of the serial mediation analysis revealed that attitude and intention sequentially mediate the path linking perceived benefits, perceived barriers and anti-littering behavior.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study in terms of theory building appears to be the first to integrate social marketing models HBM and TPB to explain and understand not only anti-littering behavior but also for setting a platform of behavior change in a larger context.