Determinants of Households’ Recycling Behaviour – Evidence from China

China’s rapid rates of urbanization and income growth have led to a rapid escalation of domestic solid waste accumulated in landfills. Various policies have been adopted by the municipal governments to improve incentives for recycling in an attempt to reduce solid waste accumulation, but the effects of these efforts appear to have been mixed. The aim of this paper is to gain further understanding of the factors that influence households’ recycling behaviour. We administered a survey to residents of Harbin city in the north-eastern China to measure their recycling frequency as well as their understanding of and attitudes towards household solid waste management. We find that knowledge and attitude about household waste management explain recycling behaviour well but that attitudes about government involvement and feeling of peer pressure do not. We find strong evidence that higher education is linked to higher frequency of recycling, weak evidence that age has a positive but diminishing effect on recycling and that income has a negative effect on recycling, and no evidence that gender affects recycling.