A conceptual framework for understanding and analysing attitudes towards household-waste management

The disposal of household waste has become a major problem for all industrialised countries. Public policy has focused on changing household attitudes by information campaigns. However, the link between environmental attitudes and actions is a very complex one. The authors develop a conceptual framework with three predictors: environmental values, situational variables, and psychological variables. This framework can be used to formulate both questionnaire design and data analysis. The paper demonstrates its utility with a report on recent research that has used the framework to provide important new findings about different attitudes and actions to waste minimisation, waste reuse, and waste recycling. These findings have clear implications for public policy as well as lending considerable empirical support to the original conceptualisation offered by the authors.