How to enhance agricultural plastic waste management in China? Insights from public participation

Agricultural plastics play a pivotal role in agricultural production. However, due to expensive costs, agricultural plastic waste management (APWM) encounters a vast funding gap. As one of the crucial stakeholders, the public deserves to make appropriate efforts for APWM. Accordingly, identifying whether the public is willing to pay for APWM and clarifying the decisions’ driving pathways to explore initiatives for promoting their payment intentions are essential to address the dilemma confronting APWM. To this end, by applying the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study conducted an empirical analysis based on 1,288 residents from four provinces (autonomous regions) of northern China. Results illustrate that: a) respondents hold generally positive and relatively strong payment willingness towards APWM; b) respondents’ attitude (AT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are positively correlated with their payment intentions (INT); c) environmental cognition (EC) and environmental emotion (EE) positively moderate the relationships between AT and INT, and between SN and INT, posing significant indirect impacts on INT. Findings imply that multi-entity cooperation, specifically public payment for APWM, can enhance agricultural non-point waste management, thus providing implications for government policy.