Toward Reducing Adolescents’ Bottled Water Purchasing: From Policy Awareness to Policy-Congruent Behavior

Abstract

Policy awareness increases the likelihood of policy-congruent behavior. Yet individuals may differ in the extent to which they notice certain policies; thus, psychological factors that explain behavior can have a differing effect on policy-congruent behavior of individuals. We investigated to what extent the relationship between normative, habitual, intentional, and situational factors that explain bottled water purchasing behavior vary regarding individuals’ awareness of policy targeted at reducing bottled water purchasing. We investigated this question in a representative sample of Lithuanian adolescents. Our study indicated that awareness of policy targeted at bottled water purchasing acts as a moderator for adolescents’ normative, habitual, intentional, and situational factors related to their bottled water purchasing. In low, moderate, and high policy awareness groups, habit was the strongest direct predictor of behavior. Normative factors had a strong effect in explaining intentions; in addition, awareness of consequences was directly related with behavior in the high policy awareness group. However, situational factors were insignificant predictors of self-reported behavior. Based on the results of the current study, we suggest that to achieve policy-congruent behavior, policy makers should consider both policy-reinforcing incentives and the level of policy awareness of the targeted group.

Exploring Bottled Water Purchase Intention via Trust in Advertising, Product Knowledge, Consumer Beliefs and Theory of Reasoned Action

“…These findings are consistent with past studies, which reported that advertising could shape consumer perceptions of BW quality, including cleanliness, taste, nutritional values, health benefits and safety (e.g., Klein and Huang 2008;Ward et al 2009;Jovarauskaitė et al 2020). This type of cognitive beliefs could then influence consumer attitude and purchase intention toward BW products.…”

“…As aforementioned, misleading information permeated through advertising messages about BW as a high-quality and safe choice preferred by consumers has helped create positive cognitive beliefs about BW consumption (Klein and Huang 2008;Ward et al 2009;Jovarauskaitė et al 2020). Advertising campaigns have also been found to lead a majority of consumers to believe BW's superiority over tap water (e.g., Hu et al 2011).…”

“…Extant literature on bottled water research primarily contains work that studied topics related to environmental research, science education, natural resource management and similar areas. Social scientific theory-based empirical research addressing bottled water use behavior remains limited (Jovarauskaitė et al 2020). The current study aims to help fill this theoretical and empirical gap by integrating a set of antecedent cognitive and affective factors with theory of reasoned action (TRA) to explain bottled water consumption intention.…”

Reducing Bottled Water Use among Adolescents: A Factorial Experimental Approach to Testing the Components of the “Aquatic” Program

“…Everyday app-based reminders to pour some tap water were used as prompts. We also expected that prompts will assist in breaking the habit of bottled water use, which, as found by Jovarauskaitė and colleagues [26], is an important predictor of behavior in adolescence. In previous research, when testing the habit discontinuity theory [27], prompts were proven to be an effective strategy for the change of habitual behavior [28].…”

I Am Better Than Others: Waste Management Policies and Self-Enhancement Bias

“…Age is considered as an important factor that influences people's perception and implementation of policies on waste separation [58][59][60][61]. Although previous research has demonstrated that children take a strong stance toward protecting the natural environment, it was found that adolescents engage less in pro-environmental behaviors [58].…”