Factors Influencing Sustainable Waste Management Behavior Among Malaysian Academics

Abstract

As the world population grew, waste production increase drastically. Similarly, waste generated by higher education institutions continues to go up. To overcome this issue, many universities have been moving towards sustainable campus. However, factors influencing sustainable waste management remains unclear and very limited research regarding this issue were conducted on academics. Hence, the objectives of this study are; (1) to examine the effect of environmental awareness, environmental knowledge and environmental beliefs on attitude, (2) to examine the effect of attitude on sustainable waste management behaviour, (3) to examine the effect of subjective norms on sustainable waste management behaviour and (4) to examine the effect of perceived behavioural control on sustainable waste management behaviour. This study employed the theory of planned behaviour as the underlying theory. The sample for this study consisted of 252 academics from the top three universities in the UI GreenMetric 2018 ranking for Malaysia. The respondents were surveyed using an online and selfadministered survey. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling through SmartPLS 3.2.8. The findings indicated that environmental awareness and environmental beliefs have positive effect on attitude whereas environmental knowledge has no effect on attitude. On the contrary, attitude had a negative effect on sustainable waste management behaviour.