Leveraging technology for waste sustainability: understanding the adoption of a new waste management system

Abstract

Abstract Many countries are under escalating pressure to meet legally binding targets in relation to recycling and waste management. This paper explores how innovative tools, including blockchain, economic incentives, and gamification, encourage consumer adoption of a novel household waste management system. We focus on developing a comprehensive framework that combines UTAUT2 (the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2) with novel features in the waste management context and additional behavioral construct, intention to recommend the system to others. We tested the proposed model using the partial least square structural equation modeling approach based on a survey of 400 respondents. The results indicate that in addition to effort expectancy, social influence, and hedonic motivation, trust, a property of blockchain technology, also impacts the respondent’s behavioral intention to use the new system. Furthermore, trust has a significant effect on both the level of system use and intention to recommend waste management system to others. The role of gamification was identified as a moderator between behavioral intention and system use and between trust and system use but not between system use and facilitating conditions. This result demonstrates that gamification can be valuable to increase adoption in users with otherwise low levels of behavioral intention. However, we did not find a strong link between either economic incentives, facilitating conditions, or performance expectancy and behavioral intention. The paper concludes by presenting the application of the proposed framework and the implications for the design of future consumer-facing waste management systems. The introduction of the novel features such as blockchain and gamification is discussed.

Keywords

• Waste management system
• Technology adoption
• UTAUT2
• Blockchain
• Recycling
• Gamification