High participation rates by the public in authority projects are key in increasing resident recycling levels. Understanding waste separation behavior is crucial to achieving sustainable waste management within such household-based schemes. To identify the driving forces behind the seldom-discussed kitchen garbage separation behavior, five psychological factors, namely, attitude, perceived behavior control, subjective norms, moral norms, and responsibility denial, are established. Our data originate from a social study of Beijing citizens conducted in July 2013 (n = 362). Through structural equation modeling, we find that moral norms are consistently the most important predictor of household kitchen waste (KW) separation behavior. Subjective norms have a larger effect on such behavior than responsibility denial. Data analysis shows that perceived behavior control contributes significantly and independently to the explanation of such behavior. By contrast, attitude towards KW separation is found to be significantly negatively correlated with separation behavior. In conclusion, the model with direct and indirect effects of psychological factors explains 50.3% of the variance in household KW source separation behavior. Implications of the results for the promotion of household KW separation programs are discussed.

A source separation program for household kitchen waste has been in place in Beijing since 2010. However, the participation rate of residents is far from satisfactory. This study was carried out to identify residents’ preferences based on an improved management strategy for household kitchen waste source separation. We determine the preferences of residents in an ad hoc sample, according to their age level, for source separation services and their marginal willingness to accept compensation for the service attributes. We used a multinomial logit model to analyze the data, collected from 394 residents in Haidian and Dongcheng districts of Beijing City through a choice experiment. The results show there are differences of preferences on the services attributes between young, middle, and old age residents. Low compensation is not a major factor to promote young and middle age residents accept the proposed separation services. However, on average, most of them prefer services with frequent, evening, plastic bag attributes and without instructor. This study indicates that there is a potential for local government to improve the current separation services accordingly.

This paper reports a contingent valuation study on household kitchen waste separation (HKWS) services via willingness to pay (WTP) conducted in the Haidian and Dongcheng districts of Beijing city in 2013. This study focuses on a real program to understand households’ attitudes toward HKWS and to estimate the value of HKWS services. The results of this study revealed that 41.4% agreed to accept the proposed price of HKWS services, while 42.2% refused to pay, but with a positive attitude toward the HKWS program. In addition, respondents’ WTP for proposed HKWS services is significantly related to the level of bid price and their gender, age and education experience. Attitudinal factors that affect resident WTP were also found. For example, respondents who perceive themselves as having a higher ability to conduct HKWS at the source are more willing to pay for their HKWS services, while respondents who complain of the inconvenience of conducting HKWS show negative WTP. The results also showed that on average each household is willing to pay about US$1.44 per month for HKWS services, which is based on 327 respondents after excluding 64 (16.4% of all sample) who indicated complete opposition to the HKWS program.