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Abstract
Litter is a global issue that pollutes water, air, and land, and has esthetic and environmental repercussions. Therefore, this study utilized the value -belief -norm (VBN) theory to analyze residents’ preventing littering behavior in Ghana. This study employed a random sampling approach and used an online survey to gather quantitative data from 511 participants. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results show that the “biospheric value,” “altruistic value,” and “egoistic value” had substantial beneficial effects on the new environmental paradigm. The findings revealed that the new environmental paradigm increased awareness of consequences, which strongly enabled the ascription of responsibility to address environmental concerns. Personal norms influenced residents’ preventing littering behavior. The study also discovered that the ascription of responsibility and new environmental paradigms promote residents’ preventing littering behavior indirectly through personal norms and awareness of consequences. The study found that awareness of consequences moderates the association between personal norms and residents’ preventing littering behavior. These findings provide new insights for litter prevention policymakers.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC): 72101117, Foreign Youth Talent Program: QN2023182001, The Belt and Road Innovative Talents Exchange with Foreign Experts Project: DL2023182002L. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions, which helped us improve this paper.