Influencing factors of urban residents' willingness to classify waste during COVID-19: The case of Hangzhou

During COVID-19, the urban environment has faced more challenges, and household waste classification has become increasingly important. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this paper studies the key influencing factors and influence paths of urban residents' willingness to perform waste classification using a structural equation model. Based on the timing of two questionnaires, one before and one after the COVID-19 outbreak, we apply multigroup analysis to test the moderating role of the pandemic. We find that 1) social norms are the primary factor that directly affects residents' willingness to classify waste, followed by perceived behavior costs and behavior attitude. All factors show a positive effect, except for perceived behavior costs. We also find that 2) the results of multigroup analysis indicate that before and after the epidemic there are significant differences in the effect from three influencing paths, which verifies that during the epidemic, the influence paths of behavior attitude and perceived behavior costs on waste classification willingness have been strengthened, but the influence from social norms is weakened. Finally, we suggest that the government should keep playing an important role in waste classification in terms of promotion, reward and penalty, as well as improvement in laws, rules and waste classification facilities.