1. Introduction
In recent years, living conditions have greatly improved in rural China. However, the problem of accumulation of dirt and debris in some areas remains because garbage is not effectively processed. According to statistics, the rural population is 552 million, accounting for more than 39.4% of the total population at the end of 2019 (Published by the China National Bureau of Statistics at
http://www.stats.gov.cn). The amount of garbage produced can reach 0.86 kg per person per day (Published by China Environmental Protection at
http://www.hbzhan.com), and it can be estimated that the annual domestic waste production in rural areas was about 173 million tons in 2019 (resident population is 205 million). The data show that China produces nearly 1 billion tons of waste every year, including 400 million tons of domestic waste, 500 million tons of construction waste, and 10 million tons of kitchen waste. The amount of waste is growing by 8% to 10% every year in China (Published by the China Association of urban environmental sanitation at
http://cnues.com).
Differently from urban waste management, rural areas are facing the following dilemmas. Firstly, compared with urban waste, the amount of rural waste is huge, and types of waste are varied. There are two main categories of rural waste in China, which are rural domestic waste and agricultural production waste. Specifically, rural domestic waste is mainly produced by farmers’ family life, including fruit peel, vegetable leaves, bones, leftovers and other kitchen waste, coal cinder, wastepaper, fiber materials, fabric, etc. Agricultural production waste is produced in the process of agricultural production, including crop straw, organic pesticides and herbicides dissolved gas, agricultural film and other plastic products, livestock and poultry breeding waste, etc. In addition, there are different methods for sorting in rural China. The methods comprise two types (recyclable and non-recyclable), three types (decomposed waste, toxic waste, and other waste), and four types (kitchen waste, recyclable waste, toxic waste, and other waste). In urban areas, only four types (kitchen waste, recyclable waste, toxic waste, and other waste) are applied. Secondly, influenced by urbanization, young rural people work as migrant workers outside their hometown, and older people and children are left behind in the rural areas. This reflects a ‘village-hollowing’ phenomenon in rural China, which leads to a large amount of garbage not collected or transported in many rural areas [
1,
2]. Thirdly, rural people with long-term bad waste disposal habits, including careless dumping, incineration, or landfill, aggravate environmental pollution, such as land, water, or air, and even threaten the physical and mental health of rural people [
3,
4]. Lastly, the low education level of the rural people makes it difficult for them to accept the new recycling facilities such as compost houses and intelligent recycling equipment, which leads to a low level of waste re-utilization in rural areas [
5,
6]. To solve the problems of garbage disposal in rural areas, in 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Construction of China selected 100 pilot counties to launch rural waste classification and resource utilization activities. However, the current situation is still not satisfying, and the rate of solid waste sorting is quite low [
7].
Numerous studies have proved that people’s waste sorting behaviors (WSB) are affected by government instruments or organizational support of external factors [
8,
9], as well as personal psychological factors of internal factors [
10,
11]. Through regulation or policy, the government and organizations establish a waste disposal policy system limiting rural people’s free-riding behaviors caused by the positive externalities of waste treatment [
12,
13]. However, environment-related policies have great uncertainty, and policy outcomes may not be demonstrated immediately, which makes individuals’ policy choices change on the perceived payoffs [
8,
10]. Hence, more and more scholars have begun to study psychological factors. Farmers are the main participants and the direct beneficiaries of waste sorting activities. Whether the waste sorting policy succeeds largely depends on farmers’ attitude to participate in waste sorting activities [
14]. As rational economic men who are ‘thin-minded,’ farmers’ decision-making is based on maximizing the utility of the trade-off between the benefits and costs of waste classification [
14,
15]. Perceived value is a typical psychological factor affecting households’ WSB. The perceived benefit of waste classification significantly affects the utility maximization, and then affects individuals’ WSB [
14,
15]. Simultaneously, the cost payment of waste sorting will decrease individuals’ utility, which then affects their enthusiasm for participating in waste sorting [
16,
17]. Therefore, to exploring the main psychological factor affecting the WSB of rural people, it is necessary to investigate effects of perceived value on the WSB from the perspective of benefit and cost analysis.
Although studies have investigated the perceived value influencing the WSB [
8,
18], the results and scopes of these studies are limited. Firstly, some scholars have paid attention to the impact of value perception on the WSB. However, it still lacks the systematic construction and measurement of perceived value indicators from the perspective of benefit and cost. Secondly, few studies have incorporated perceived cost and benefit into a framework to deeply analyze the key perceived value factors affecting people’s WSB, especially rural people. Thirdly, few scholars have focused on the analysis of the perceived value effects on the WSB at different income levels.
Based on the above analysis, perceived benefit and perceived cost of the perceived value can affect the household WSB. Besides, the household’s decision on the WSB is affected by the income level on utility theory. Therefore, there are different factors of perceived benefit and perceived cost affecting the WSB at different income levels. Hence, the purpose of the study is to explore the effect of perceived benefit and perceived cost of perceived value on household WSB and the heterogeneity effect of perceived value on the WSB at different income levels by employing ordered logit regression and using 688 data in the rural Shaanxi province, China. In addition, the study offers targeted policy proposals for improving the WSB in rural China in perspective of cost and benefit.
3. Data
The Ministry of Housing and Construction of China chose 100 pilot counties to implement waste sorting in 2017. Four of these counties were in Shaanxi. Shaanxi is an important western agricultural area, which has a population of more than 20 million, approximately 46% of whom live in rural areas. Hence the sample of rural people of Shaanxi is representative of western China. A large-scale survey was carried out in the Shaanxi Province over the period 14–28 April 2018 (
Figure 1). Considering the different rural environments of the pilot of the Baota District of Yan’an, we chose three pilot counties: Gaoling District of Xi’an, Dali County of Weinan, and Langao County of Ankang. In total, 10 administrative villages from south to central Shaanxi were selected, and 2–3 sample village (nature village) were selected in each administrative village jointly considering distribution and levels of economic development. 20–25 farmers were randomly selected for interview in each sample village. Taking into account the low education levels of the rural people in China, we conducted a face-to-face interview, with each interview lasting about one hour to ensure that every respondent could better understand the questions. In the end, we approached 700 households and managed to complete 688 questionnaires, for a 98.28% response rate.
The questionnaire was built on the theory of extended planned behavior (TPB), value-belief-norm (VBN), and utility analysis. All reflecting scales and indicators were adopted from previous studies. The contents of the questionnaire include socio-demographic background, and waste management behavior, consisting of a willingness to sort and pay, and frequency of waste separation; perceived benefit and perceived cost toward the WSB and policy instruments consisting of infrastructure, information campaign, and incentives policy. Of the respondents, 48.11% were male, and 51.89% were female. In terms of education level and age, the interviewed farmers were mainly over 40 years old (76.02%) with a low education level (80.67% with junior high school/technical school or below). The average age of the sample was 50.3 years, which was consistent with the current situation of rural China exhibiting a ‘village-hollowing’. It also shows that the main participants of rural domestic waste classification were aging farmers. The respondents with a yearly household income of 40,000 yuan and below accounted for 38.81% of the total sample, with an average annual income of 65,400 yuan (The average income of urban residents in Shaanxi Province was 95,511 yuan. Published by the Shaanxi Province Bureau of Statistics at
http://tjj.shaanxi.gov.cn/). Details are shown in
Table 1.
6. Discussion
The purpose of this paper was to analyze the effects of perceived benefit and perceived cost of perceived value on household WSB. Measurement scales of perceived benefit and perceived cost were developed, ordered logit regression, and cluster regression was introduced. The results confirmed that the perceived benefit played a positive role, and the perceived cost played a negative role in the WSB. This is consistent with the studies by Li et al. [
31] and Lee et al. [
36]. Furthermore, perceived benefits and perceived cost have different effects on WSB in high- and low-income groups.
From the perspective of perceived benefit, the spiritual benefit has a positive effect on the WSB. Material benefit has no significant effect on the WSB. This is inconsistent with the previous study [
52]. The possible reasons are as follows. Firstly, the material benefit from selling recyclable garbage and disposing of decaying garbage is small; therefore, it could not reach the threshold value of encouraging households to sort waste. Secondly, the incentive policies provided by the government, such as gifts or subsidies, are too low to make farmers perceive the material benefits.
From the perspective of perceived cost, time cost, physical cost and material cost have negative effects on the WSB, and learning cost has no significant effects on the WSB. For time cost, the farmers spend much time in heavy agricultural production in rural china, and hence, when they consider that waste sorting is a waste of time, they tend to refuse waste sorting. For the physical cost, combined with descriptive statistics and the current situation of ‘hollowing out’ in rural areas, the main participants of waste treatment are generally older farmers. Comparing with energetic young people, older people will perceive a higher physical cost during the complex classification process—it will hinder their participation in waste sorting. The possible reasons for material costs are as follows. Firstly, due to the unbalanced supply of public goods and services, the level of policy instruments varies greatly in different rural areas, and the situation of insufficient classification facilities and low frequency of centralized recycling still exists [
66]. Consequently, farmers have to buy classified garbage cans or establish temporary garbage dumps, which leads to additional expenses and increases households’ material costs. Secondly, because households predict a cost-sharing of waste classification, they will worry that the implementation of waste classification may lead to an extra waste treatment fee and the cost-sharing of recyclable facilities provided by the government. Hence, the increase in perceived material cost will reduce farmers’ enthusiasm to participate in waste classification.
From the perspective of the heterogeneity effect of income, spiritual benefit, physical cost, learning cost, and material cost are the main factors of perceived value affecting the WSB in the low-income group. Time cost, physical cost, material cost are the main factors of perceived value affecting the WSB in the high -income group. A possible reason is that the higher the material cost of households in the low-income group for waste classification, the stronger the willingness to continue to participate in waste classification, thus showing the higher classification frequency because of loss aversion. However, households with higher perceived material cost have a lower frequency of participating in waste classification when they think waste sorting is troublesome or time-consuming. In summary, time cost, learning cost, and material cost show different influence effects on WSB in high- and low-income groups.
Besides, for the control variable, education level has a significantly negative correlation with WSB, inconsistent with previous studies [
51,
55]. The possible reason is that the implementation of the waste classification policy in pilot areas is compulsory, and farmers with a lower education level may more easily subordinate to the policy than more educated ones. Annual household income has a negative effect on WSB. The possible reason is that the farmers at a lower income level are more likely to be motivated by material benefit and thus more actively participate in waste classification than those at a higher income level. Information on policy instruments has no significant impact on WSB. Some research shows that the longer the promotion time of social publicity activities, the higher the level of waste classification of individuals [
4]. Therefore, the possible reason is that the pilot areas are in the early stage of waste sorting because waste sorting policy was implemented in 2017, and the publicity and promotion time is short, thus the impact of information on waste classification behaviors is not fully realized.
7. Conclusion and Policy Implications
7.1. Conclusions
Based on the utility maximization theory of the rational economic man, this paper analyses the effect mechanism of perceived value on household waste classification behavior from the perspective of benefit and cost analysis. Then, it investigates the group differences of perceived value on WSB of households in high- and low-income groups by using 688 household survey data from three cities and three counties in the Shaanxi Province. The conclusions are as follows.
Firstly, the perceived value has a significant impact on the household waste classification behavior. Specifically, the perceived benefit has a significantly positive impact on household waste classification behavior, and the perceived cost has a significantly negative impact on WSB. The spiritual benefit of the perceived benefit has a significantly positive impact on the household waste classification behavior, while the material income of the perceived benefit has no significant positive impact on the WSB. Time cost, physical cost, and material cost of the perceived cost have a significantly negative impact on household waste classification behaviors, while learning cost has not passed the significance test.
Secondly, the impact of perceived value on waste classification behavior of households at different income levels is different. Specifically, the spiritual benefit has a significantly positive impact on WSB of households in the low-income group, but it has no significant impact on WSB in the higher income group. The learning cost, physical cost, and material cost of the perceived cost are the important factors influencing the waste classification behavior in the low-income group, while the time cost, physical cost, and material cost affect the farmers’ participation in waste separation in the high-income group.
Thirdly, besides the perceived benefit and perceived cost, gender and age have no significant effects on WSB. Education levels had a significantly negative correlation with WSB. The past garbage disposal habit of households has a significantly positive correlation with the waste classification behaviors. For policy instrument variables, the infrastructure and incentive policy significantly positively affect waste classification behaviors. However, the information has no significant impact on the WSB.
7.2. Policy Implications
This study has some policy implications. The government should enhance the enthusiasm of rural residents to participate in domestic waste classification by exploring the dual perspective of perceived benefit and perceived cost. The countermeasures are as follows.
Firstly, the government could provide information in terms of the importance, methods, and welfare effects of waste classification, combining ‘offline’ and ‘online’ modes, which could enhance the spiritual benefits of farmers and reduce their learning costs. Specifically, from the perspective of an offline mode, the local government could establish a classified guide policy, which could provide face-to-face publicity, guidance, inspection, and supervision with the help of classified guiders. From the perspective of an online mode, the government could encourage technical persons or companies to develop a cell phone application of waste classification to provide relevant waste sorting knowledge flexibly and vividly.
Secondly, the local government could establish a new management model, the supervision of the block head. Specifically, considering the geographical location of the areas, the village government should be divided into several blocks and select a farmer with a good reputation as a block head for each block. The block head is responsible for supervising the situation of waste classification in the region, and the block head should inspect, inform the situation of waste classification in time, and make the corresponding encouragement and punishment decisions according to the inspection results, which could improve the perceived benefit in the perspective of reputation benefit.
Thirdly, for the purposes of improving the perceived material benefit of households, the government can expand the recycling pathways of perishable waste and recyclable waste through third-party recycling companies or by public-private partnership projects to increase the waste recycling rate. The current situation of rural waste treatment is that a large quantity of recyclable and perishable waste available for sale to recycling companies is not collectible due to the lack of recycling channels. In the field investigation, we found that only the plastic film used to cover the plastic greenhouse has a stable recycling channel among the numerous recyclable wastes. Hence, it is necessary to expand the recycling pathways to increase the recycling rate for waste reduction and to improve the perceived material benefit to encourage more households to participate in waste sorting.
Finally, considering the different impacts of perceived value on WSB at different income levels, it is suggested that the relevant departments should flexibly set up a variety of classification modes according to the economic development status of rural areas, the income level of farmers, and the acceptance degree and cooperation of farmers for waste classification. Specifically, the two-categories sorting mode of recyclable and non-recyclable or the three-categories sorting mode of decomposed waste, toxic waste, and other waste can be adopted in areas with a high income level. However, a four-categories sorting mode can be adopted in low-level income areas, or even a six-categories sorting mode or more. Meanwhile, the government should take more responsibility for the allocation of garbage sorting facilities to reduce the material cost perception of farmers in the areas with a low economic development level.