The moral roots of household waste-sorting attitudes and intentions in China

Previous environmental research used a general conceptualization of moral norms (e.g., it is my moral obligation to recycle) without specifying the exact moral underpinning of such a conceptualization. This analysis examined how five basic moral foundations (i.e., harm, fairness, ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity) were associated with Chinese residents’ waste-sorting attitudes and intentions. This analysis used data from a cross-sectional online survey of 459 Chinese residents conducted in 2021. The results revealed that value-expressive attitudes were a fairly strong predictor of waste-sorting intentions, whereas attitudes about inconvenience and time were a weak predictor. Further analysis of direct and total relationships revealed that the moral foundations of ingroup loyalty and authority were the primary moral foundations for the Chinese participants; the effects were both direct and mediated by the value-expressive attitudes. Using detailed attitudinal and moral foundations can provide explanatory adequacy and specificity for environmental research and education efforts.