Investigating household recycling behaviour in a multicultural setting : the case of St Paul’s Bay

Abstract

PURPOSE: The main objective of this study is to investigate recycling behaviour, the factors that affect households in recycling, the perception and attitude adopted by householders at St Paul’s Bay locality about the activity of waste separation, but focusing on the effect of living in multicultural locality. Other aims of this study are to analyse the service provided by St Paul’s Bay local council in respect to waste collection and if households are influenced by their neighbours, tourists or foreigners living in Malta. On this basis, possible improvements in waste management intervention are proposed. DESIGN: In this study, the targeted population are all the householders at St Paul’s Bay locality and the sampling frame is made up of all householders who are registered in the electoral register for the local council. The total number of households that participated in this research is 378 and a systemic sample technique is used here to produce representative sample. The methodology adopted to investigate household recycling behaviour at St Paul’s Bay is a quantitative survey and a questionnaire was used to collect the necessary data. The data was analysed in order to fulfil the principle objectives of the study. FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained show that Maltese and mixed households recycle more than foreign households. Also, the foreigners have a higher score of negative attitude towards recycling when compared to the two other groups. In the case of positive attitudes, they have lower score. However, most of the participants living at this locality participated and cooperated in the separation of their waste and there is a consensus among the respondents that recycling is beneficial to the environment and reduces wastefulness of resources. On the other hand, factors like space, time, unpleasantness and participation by others are not key factors in whether respondents recycle or not. Some suggestions for a policy for waste management intervention are also presented.