Zhang, Y.; Zhang, M.; Weng, Z.; Gao, X.; Liao, W. The Influence of Social Norms and Environmental Regulations on Rural Households’ Pesticide Packaging Waste Disposal Behavior. Sustainability2023, 15, 15938.
Zhang, Y.; Zhang, M.; Weng, Z.; Gao, X.; Liao, W. The Influence of Social Norms and Environmental Regulations on Rural Households’ Pesticide Packaging Waste Disposal Behavior. Sustainability 2023, 15, 15938.
Zhang, Y.; Zhang, M.; Weng, Z.; Gao, X.; Liao, W. The Influence of Social Norms and Environmental Regulations on Rural Households’ Pesticide Packaging Waste Disposal Behavior. Sustainability2023, 15, 15938.
Zhang, Y.; Zhang, M.; Weng, Z.; Gao, X.; Liao, W. The Influence of Social Norms and Environmental Regulations on Rural Households’ Pesticide Packaging Waste Disposal Behavior. Sustainability 2023, 15, 15938.
Abstract
The agricultural ecological environment provides an important resource guarantee for social development. The extensive management mode of agriculture in China has not fundamentally changed; the contradiction between production and governance is still prominent, and the management of agricultural surface pollution has a long way to go. Based on the data of 547 rural households in Jiangxi province, this paper uses the Ordered Logit, 2SLS, and moderation effect model to analyze the mechanism between social norms (SNs) and rural households’ (RHs) disposal of pesticide packaging waste (PPW) and to test the moderation effect of environmental regulation (ER) in the influence path of SN to RHs’ disposal of PPW. The results show that (1) descriptive and directive norms can promote RHs not to litter PPW. However, the role of surrounding crowd supervision (directive norms) is more obvious than the behavior of the surrounding crowd (descriptive norms). The consistent conclusion was still obtained after the robustness test and endogeneity treatment. (2) The results of the moderation effect test showed that reputational incentives strengthened the promotional effect of directive norms on RHs' behavior of not littering PPW; punitive regulation hindered the promotional effect of descriptive norms on RHs' behavior of not littering PPW. Based on the findings of the study, the following policy recommendations are put forward: continue to strengthen the guidance and soft binding force of informal institutions such as SNs; accurately locate the target groups and formulate differentiated measures; pay attention to the complementary nature of formal and informal institutions, and reasonably formulate environmental regulations to fit in with SNs.
Keywords
pesticide packaging waste; social norms; environmental regulation; moderating effects
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.