Adolescents’ Social Media Use and Their Voluntary Garbage Sorting Intention: A Sequential Mediation Model

Abstract

Encouraging adolescents to sort garbage is vital for the sustainable development of the ecological environment. This study investigates the relationship between adolescents’ social media use and their garbage sorting intention. A survey, in both online and paper-based versions, was distributed in 2020 in Shanghai and a total number of 605 valid responses were obtained. This study supports the proposed sequential mediation model, indicating that adolescents’ social media use increased their garbage sorting intention via the serial mediation effect of objective and subjective knowledge and the perceived importance of garbage sorting. The current study and its findings provide important insights into the link between adolescents’ social media use and their garbage sorting intention, particularly its underlying mechanism, by distinguishing knowledge into two specific types and introducing perceived importance into the conceptual model. Practical implications for improving adolescents’ intention to sort garbage are also discussed.

College students’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices of garbage sorting and their associations: a cross-sectional study of several universities in Beijing, China

“…What can be seen in the knowledge test of university students on waste classification is that the knowledge of university students on waste classification is not satisfactory, and the knowledge education needs to be strengthened. The results of the research show that nearly half of the students do not yet know the standards of the four categories of waste classification: food waste, recyclable waste, hazardous waste, and other waste, and the average score of 1,282 college students on the knowledge of waste classification is only 5.56 (out of 10), which is consistent with the findings of the study of Ai et al (43). In addition, we found that first-year university students performed significantly better than other years in terms of their knowledge of waste classification.…”

Sleep and delinquency: The context of self-control, social support, and sex differences among French adolescents

“…The PROCESS macro is particularly adept at accounting for multiple mediation effects operating in parallel, enabling users to formally assess sequential indirect links while combining mediation and moderation tests (Hayes, 2015; Hayes et al, 2017). Following prior research (Ai et al, 2021; Zhuang et al, 2018), we computed regression equations and estimated the mediator variable models using sleep variables and self-control as the respective sequential mediators, enabling us to estimate indirect effects by bootstrapping methods (1000 bootstraps). The results of these analyses are shown in Table 5.…”

Role of User-Generated Content, Key Opinion Leader, Virtual Community, and Culture in Shaping Pro-Environmental Behavior: Propositions and Conceptual Framework

“…Both cognitive and affective aspects of social media affect tourist' pro-environmental behavior (Sultan et al, 2021). Social media is also found to have influence on individuals' pro-environmental behavior through communicative role that social media has (Ai et al, 2021). Through shared information on social media, travel opinion leader also influence tourists' behavior (Javed et al, 2020;Vrana & Zafiropoulos, 2010;Yoo et al, 2011).…”