Why “Say One Thing and Do Another” a Study on the Contradiction between Farmers’ Intention and Behavior of Garbage Classification

Abstract

How to protect the ecological environment is an important international issue for achieving the sustainable development goals. Using survey data of 2628 farmers in 52 administrative villages in 13 prefecture-level cities of the China Land Economic Survey in 2020, probit and multinomial logistic regression models were used to explore the influence of social capital on farmers’ willingness, behavior and the transformation between willingness and behavior. The results show that: (1) The consistency between farmers’ willingness and behavior is low; 90.25% of farmers had the willingness to separate waste, but only 48.49% of farmers had actually classified waste, and only 48.22% of farmers had transformed willingness into behavior. (2) Among the three dimensions of social capital, social network, social norm and social trust, all had positive and significant effects on farmers’ willingness and behavior to separate waste. (3) Social network and social norm had a positive and significant impact on the transformation of farmers’ willingness to separate waste into behavior, but social trust was not significant. The research results confirm that the contradiction between farmers’ intention and behavior of waste separation were generally inconsistent in rural areas. At the same time, the results showed that social capital can promote farmers’ willingness and behavior of waste separation and the transformation from a willingness to behavior, which can provide decision-making reference for how to improve farmers’ high willingness and behavior.