Motivating Recycling Behavior: From a Psychological Perspective

Motivation to Increase Recycling Behavior: From a Psychological Perspective
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Motivation to Increase Recycling Behavior: From a Psychological Perspective
1. Introduction
The Sustainable Consumption goal 12 (SGD 12) ensures that the production of goods processes protects human beings' well-being by managing the resources used and environmental degradation. According to Keizer & Schultz (2018), achieving the goals call human nature to change the production and consumption of goods and resources to reduce our ecological footprint. The essential targets that help achieve the goal include control of disposal methods of the toxic pollutants and wastes and effective management of shared natural resources. For instance, agriculture is the highest consumer of water worldwide. It can be the best place to control water waste. Farmers can recycle the wasted water to ensure they save resources.
The recycling behavior affects the UN SGD 12 goals positively. Consumers, industries, and businesses need to start recycling, and reducing waste disposal can make a big difference. Whenever a company recycles what they were to dispose of, the amount of pollution lowers (Keizer & Schultz, 2018). The recycling process is vital in the future because of the reduction of waste materials. Recycling can be the best solution to ensure that developing countries create sustainable consumption patterns by 2030. Recycling is one way of ensuring the effectiveness of UN SGD 12. Its capability to protect the environment from toxic materials makes the goals a success. Moreover, it is helpful in shared resource management. Companies that embrace recycling use fewer raw materials than those that have to go back to the source all the time.
Furthermore, social phenomenon plays a vital role in changing the mindsets of people. A community that believes in environmental preservations always has the easy task of adopting recycling behavior. Once a community takes up the recycling responsibility, waste disposal won't be a problem for them. The community understands the importance of managing natural resources for the sake of future generations. The paper covers the psychological perspective of recycling behavior. It illustrates the internal and external motivations and how they can promote the UN SDG 12 goals. Lastly, the paper analyzes recycling and corporate social responsibility.
Research question: How do internal and external motivations affect human recycling behavior?
1 Arguments from a Psychological Perspective
The psychology of recycling is essential in determining whether people recycle and how they choose to recycle. Understanding the recycling behavior makes it easier for people to recycle. It helps in deciding what to recycle or discard and how to recycle them. Once people understand the advantages of recycling, it is easy for them to adopt the recycling behavior. The psychology of recycling depends highly on internal and external motivations.
Internal Motivations
People have some internal factors that lead them to make life decisions. Personal beliefs create the inner instincts of a person. People act pro-socially with the desire to get the reward. The idea that whenever someone does something good, they have interior satisfaction drives them to choose to do the right thing (Keizer & Schultz, 2018). Pro-environmental behavior depends on the different internal motivations. Internal instincts play a significant role in the creation of pro-environmental behaviors. People who believe that they should always keep the environment clean will always find happiness in maintaining a clean environment. They end up adding the belief in their instinct that they do not need anyone to remind them. The moment they have to decide whether to dispose of waste at the wrong place or not, they will always make the correct choice. Creating the belief of environmental behavior in a person is the most reliable way to cause pro-environmental behavior. Once a person is conscious about the environment, they will always invent ways to take care of it to feel happy.
Moreover, a person's cultural orientation regarding the environment determines their pro-active behavior. Stern (2000) asserts that cultural factors play a vital role in determining people's decisions in certain situations. It is so hard to make a person act against their cultural belief. Installing the nature of environment conservation in young kids creates a culture that will always direct their decision. For example, a child who ages in a cultural setting supporting environmental preservation will grow up with pro-environmental behavior.
Finally, the values in a person affect their reaction to the environment. The principles that govern a person determine a lot in their life. People get their values either from the people around them or their personality (Stern, 2000). Once a person creates standards that they believe they are to live, it is easy for them to make a life decision. Encouraging people to love their environment makes them set principles that protect the environment. The urge to protect the environment causes people to have pro-environmental behavior.
Value-Belief-Norm Theory
The Values-Belief-Norm theory is the theory that states that a person's behavior depends on their principles and belief system. To change a person's belief changing their attitude is paramount (Stern, 2000). The creation of a new perspective to an individual requires creating a new role towards the new belief. For an attitude to affect the behavior, the person needs to understand their role in the new norm and the consequences of not changing. Once a person understands his role, he is willing to make it a new belief and follow it to the end. The creation of a pro-environmental behavior belief in a person increases the chances of the environment protection needs.
External Motivations
Different external motivations can prevent the effectiveness of pro-environmental behavior. The first motivation is the high time cost. The process of ensuring that a person lives a pro-environmental life can be time-consuming. The recycling method can take longer than just buying a new product (Nook et al., 2016). Most people prefer to take the easy way out, exposing the world to the risk of environmental pollution.
Moreover, the high recovery cost can discourage people from taking the pro-environmental route. The fear of investing in the recycling process makes many companies evade the process. Most people are not willing to spend on the expensive initial cost despite the long-term reward. They choose to dispose of the waste to the environment risking the entire community than solving the problem. Finally, the low monetary incentives create a fear to invest in pro-environmental behaviors. The companies' unwillingness to invest in the motivation tactics to push the employees to participate in the pro-environmental behavior makes it challenging to achieve them. People who are appreciated are more willing to deliver than those who work to please the company (Nook et al., 2000). The unwieldiness to encourage the workers to be protecting the environment makes it hard to create a pro-environmental behavior organization.
However, conformity is an external motivation that yields positive results. Most people act like the people around them. A person that lives in a household that believes in pro-environmental behavior will adopt it after a while (Keizer & Schultz, 2018). The conformity network can continue until it becomes a culture to a particular community, changing the future generation.
2 Recycling and Corporate Social Responsibility
Promoting Recycling Behaviors as a Kind of CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) requires all the workers to achieve a specific social responsibility. The process of CSR might look so hard to achieve. The inclusion of factors like recycling as one of the Corporate Social Responsibility can create success in creating pro-environmental behavior in the organization (Modak & Kelle, 2018). The organization can assure the success of the process by dividing roles in the recycling process. One team can be handling the part of deciding what to recycle, and the other team takes the area of choosing how to recycle the material. The promotion of recycling as a kind of CSR is an easy way of ensuring the process's success. The promotion process takes different efforts.
The first way for an organization to ensure that recycling is a kind of CRS in the company is by designing packaging purposely with a recycling mind. A company has to create a type of packaging that allows the buyers to recycle the packaging (Modak & Kelle, 2018). It can also make an effort to ensure that most packaging materials get back to the company with the recycling purpose. For instance, a company like Coca-Cola creates glass bottles and sells the products at a lower price than plastic products. The company expects the clients to return the glass bottles to recycle and repackage other products in them. The creation of the glass bottles purposefully indicates promoting recycling as a CRS in the company. The company makes their workers understand their roles in making the process a success.
Additionally, the creation of products that allow recycling promotes recycling as a kind of CRS. Companies can use raw materials that can be refurbished into other new products after some time. Companies can develop offers to all the clients to replace their old products with new ones at a lower price (Johari & Motlagh, 2019). The proces...