The Role of Environmental Education in Waste Segregation-at-Source Behaviour among Households in Putrajaya
Kai Wah Cheng, Syuhaily Osman
Department of Resource Management and Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia
Abstract
Fast population, rapidly changing lifestyle, great urbanization along with aggressive economic development and the rapid changes in consumption rate have accelerated the daily generation and volume rate of municipal solid wastes. Efficient solid waste management has become one of the daunting national challenges, typically in developing countries, including Malaysia, to cope with the solutions for many serious environmental problems. The main purpose of this research is to examine the moderating effect of environmental education in relationships between households’ attitude, perceived behavioural control and subjective norm with waste segregation-atsource behaviour. The subject of this research was households who are living in Putrajaya and the sample was selected via multistage sampling and systematic sampling method. It was quantitative research by distributing a self-administrative questionnaire. The measurements were adapted from different sources to examine participants’ attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norm and environmental education with waste segregation-at-source behaviour. The results reveal that environmental education does moderate the relationships between attitude and perceived behavioural control with waste segregation-at-source behaviour positively. However, environmental education does not moderate the relationship between subjective norm with waste segregation-at-source behaviour positively. The findings provide an insight particularly for the local pro-environmental groups on factors that they should consider in developing pro-environmental policies. Furthermore, future research recommended using the online questionnaire in a bid to further improve the respond’s rate and be more cost-effective in various aspects.
Keywords: Attitude, Environmental education, Perceived behavioural control, Subjective norm, Waste segregation-at-source behaviour
