Intention in use recyclable express packaging in consumers’ behavior: An empirical study

Highlights

• This study integrates the moral norms, awareness of consequences and convenience into the extended theory of planned behavior.

• The use of disposable express packaging has increasingly express deliveries and leads to the waste of resources and environmental pollution.

• The hypotheses are tested using partial least square-structural equation model with 890 valid questionnaires.

• Usage intention and perceived behavior control cause a significant positive effect on the usage behavior of recyclable express packagings.

• Convenience, subjective norms, and moral norms are the most important factors affecting the usage intention of young consumers.

Abstract

This study integrates customers’ intention to use recyclable express packaging by extending the theory of planned behavior. Prior studies are lacking to address the convenience, moral norms and awareness of consequences in the model. The use of disposable express packaging has become increasingly prominent because of the explosive growth in the number of express deliveries and this leads to the waste of resources and environmental pollution. The data are collected from 1303 valid questionnaires. The hypotheses are tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that usage intention and perceived behavioral control have a significant positive effect on the usage behavior of recyclable express packaging by consumers aged 14–35. Convenience, subjective norms, and moral norms are the most important factors affecting the usage intention of these young Chinese consumers. Meanwhile, attitude and perceived behavioral control play a significant positive role in young consumers’ usage intention. Awareness of consequences has no significant influence on usage intention.

Introduction

The rapid development of online shopping worldwide has promoted the prosperity of the express delivery and logistics industry, especially in China (Fig. 1). In 2018, the Chinese express delivery market recorded 50.71 billion orders and over 100 million parcels each day (National Bureau of Statistic of China (NBSC) 2019). Express delivery is accompanied by major environmental issues caused by various packaging materials. In 2018, the express delivery industry in China used about 14.3 billion boxes, 24.5 billion plastic bags, 5.3 billion woven bags, and 43 billion meters of adhesive tape (Zheng and Chi, 2019). However, the overall recycling rate of these materials is less than 20% and more than 80% are discarded (Liu and Liu, 2017). Such a large volume of express packaging waste is a heavy burden on China's logistics industry (Fan et al., 2017) because of the lack of legal supervision and the phenomenon of excessive packaging (Feng et al., 2016).

Developed countries initially proposed the concept of recyclable packaging (Lin et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2011). Major express delivery operators in China have also gradually begun to launch various recyclable express packaging projects. Adopting reusable packaging can reduce the consumption of natural resources as well as the production costs of operators. However, the popularization of this new concept faces huge challenges. Consumers are still reluctant to change their original usage habits and their participation in recycling packaging projects is low. To solve this problem, researchers have examined the promotion of recyclable express packaging. For example, Zhang (2019) investigated the usage of express packaging in higher education institutions in which an initiative to use green packaging has been launched. This study suggested establishing a packaging recycling system and increasing its publicity to spread awareness. Some experts have also suggested that the government should establish and improve the packaging recycling system to encourage the use of recyclable express packaging (Duan et al., 2019) as well as introduce laws and regulations to restrict the use and recycling standards of recyclable packaging to ensure express operators and consumers use recyclable packaging correctly (Liu, 2018).

Although progress on recycling express packaging has been made, however, studies of its management from the perspective of customers’ behavioral intention are scarce. The key factor to recyclable express packaging is reverse recycling, and consumers are the starting point of any reverse supply chain (Kumar, 2019). One of the main reasons for the waste of resources in express packaging is the excessive packaging of express packaging (Feng et al., 2016). Unreasonable practices have stimulated the express delivery industry to produce more packaging materials to meet growing demand for packaging, which has increased the pressure to reduce environmental pollution and energy consumption (Hao et al., 2019). Therefore, it is feasible to explore solutions based on consumers’ behavioral intention.

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) takes individuals’ own willingness and external environment as the units of analysis. This theory can help managers formulate effective measures and achieve organizational goals by determining the regularity of people's psychological and behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 1991; Hersey et al., 2007; Si et al., 2020). The TPB has been widely used to study behavioral intention. Further, based on the original theory, many scholars have added new influencing factors to extend the TPB framework (Alhassan et al., 2018; Ding et al., 2018; Wan et al., 2012). This extended TPB model has been applied to the fields of environmental protection, education, health, and others.

In particular, prior studies have applied the theory to reverse logistics. For instance, Khan et al. (2018) discussed the intention of Pakistani consumers to recycle plastic waste and added altruistic behavior into the model. Subjective norms (SN) and convenience also have a significant effect on consumers’ intention. The lack of relevant legal restrictions and an immature recycling system are the main obstacles to the promotion of recycling. Ru et al. (2019) not only added moral norms (MN) into the extended TPB to study Chinese youth's willingness to reduce PM2.5, but also found an indirect relationship between SN and behavioral intention. Their research also found that SN, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and MN play a vital role in promoting PM2.5 reduction behavior in terms of the overall effect. Kumar (2019) added awareness of consequences (AC) and MN into the TPB, verifying the willingness of young people of different cultures to recycle e-waste. Hence, many studies have shown that the extended TPB can explain the influence of various factors on consumers’ behavioral intention from the perspective of psychology. Therefore, based on the TPB, this study explores the main factors that drive the promotion of recyclable express packaging for young Chinese consumers and proposes constructive suggestions for developing green express packaging.

The contributions of this study are as follows. (1) It provides a new way of thinking to show effective measures for promoting recyclable express packaging. Few researchers have explored such promotion measures based on consumers’ demand; (2) This study adds convenience, MN, and AC into the TPB model and verifies the rationality and fitting degree of the extended model; And (3) this study reveals the factors influencing the intention of young Chinese consumers to use recyclable express packaging and proposes relevant management implications as a reference for promoting the green development of the express delivery service industry in China, which is important to promote the sustainable development of the ecological environment.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical background and framework as well as the hypotheses. Section 3 introduces the survey method and data collection. Section 4 presents the results. Section 5 describes the theoretical and practical implications. Section 6 concludes and provides directions for future study.