Exploring young consumers' sustainable plastic management behaviour in a developing country

This paper explores the impact of cognitive, non-cognitive, and emotional factors in shaping consumers' sustainable plastic management behaviour (SPMB), which includes plastic consumption reduction and plastic waste disposal behaviour. An extended model of the theory of planned behaviour is developed, incorporating factors- moral norm, pro-environmental habit, and anticipation of guilt feeling. Data was collected surveying young consumers from Dhaka City in Bangladesh. The result shows that intention is the main precursor of SPMB followed by the perceived behavioural control (PBC) and habit. Intention is significantly impacted by eco-awareness, moral norms, guilt feeling and habit, whereas insignificantly impacted by attitude, subjective norm and PBC. Among these factors, the impact of the moral norm was found to be strong in forming the intention of SPMB, where moral norm significantly impacts guilt feeling. It was found that non-cognitive and emotional factors are dominant compared to cognitive factors in shaping SPMB of young consumers.