Study on user intentions for a sustainable community idle book recycling and reading service system from the perspective of value co-creation: a design proposal and validation based on Chinese community residents

Sustainable development has become mainstream in today’s era, and sustainability education is gradually gaining attention worldwide. This study addresses the issue of significant resource waste and environmental pollution resulting from improper disposal of books idle after use in traditional education. In practice, based on the theory of value co-creation and using perceived value as a design indicator, we have innovatively developed a design proposal consisting of both an online service system and offline community management facilities to effectively address this issue. On the theoretical front, this study further expands the research focus on the theory of value co-creation in traditional research and constructs a community value co-creation reading behavior model, effectively enriching and extending previous research. Through the analysis method of structural equation modeling, the design project was validated, and the results indicate that the value co-creation proposed in this study can effectively promote users’ perception of service price value, quality/performance value, emotional value, and social value. Price value, quality/performance value, and emotional value all positively influence users’ intention to use, while social value indirectly affects intention to use through emotional value. Among these, price value is the core factor influencing users’ intention to use. This provides highly actionable insights for the development of sustainable economies and education.