The Last but Not the Least Piece of Marine Debris Management: Decoding Factors in Consumers’ Intentions to Purchase Recycled Marine Debris Products

Chung-Ling Chen (), Xiang-Nong Jian and Wen-Hao Jiang
Additional contact information
Chung-Ling Chen: Institute of Ocean Technology and Marine Affairs, Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
Xiang-Nong Jian: Institute of Ocean Technology and Marine Affairs, Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
Wen-Hao Jiang: Institute of Ocean Technology and Marine Affairs, Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: With a phenomenal amount of marine debris being retrieved from the coast and sea, an initiative to engage in marine debris recycling, particularly of plastic debris, has been on the governmental agenda in Taiwan in recent years. Consumers purchasing products made from marine debris is a critical driver behind this initiative. It is therefore important to understand the factors influencing consumers’ purchase intentions towards these products. By employing the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this paper aims to decode the factors and thereby infer potential measures to enhance consumers’ purchase intentions for these specific products in Taiwan, where recycling marine debris is at the beginning stage. By conducting a questionnaire survey, the study collected a total of 392 valid samples and found that a high percentage of respondents had not heard of marine debris labels as well as having never bought products made from marine debris. In addition, by testing the hypotheses using binary logit regression, the study found that ‘environmental attitude’, ‘perceived price’, ‘availability’, and ‘marine debris label’ were the major factors that significantly influenced consumers’ intentions to purchase these products. With a view to increasing market penetration of these products, this paper highlights the need to strengthen environmental education, subsidize manufacturers in the production of products, promote labels and enhance product availability, and enhance public participation in marine conservation activities.

Keywords: marine debris; recycling; purchase intention; green products (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/9/3869/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/9/3869/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:9:p:3869-:d:1388803

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().