The Influence of Reward and Penalty on Households’ Recycling Intention

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the influences of economic instruments on households’ recycling intention in order to help Malaysian government to apply a proper intervention in advancing and enforcing recycling regulations. The Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) was used in this research to investigate the effects of intervention factors on households’ recycling intention. 384 participants were selected and questionnaires were utilized to collect data relating to the influences of reward and penalty on households’ recycling intention in Kuala Lumpur. The results showed that both reward and penalty has significant relationship with households’ recycling intention (reward β= 0.355, p< 0.001; penalty β= 0.214, p<0.001) while reward significantly influence attitude (β= 0.414, p<0.001) and penalty influence perceived behavioural control (β= -0.340, p<0.001). Moreover, the result showed perceived behavioural control as the weakest factor influencing households’ recycling intention (β= 0.160, p<0.05). The results of this study indicate that penalty is a proper intervention to increase households’ recycling intention in Kuala Lumpur.