In an illuminating new study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, researchers delve deep into the complex interplay between psychological and behavioral factors driving agricultural waste recycling among Chinese farmers. Breaking fresh ground, this investigation unearths the critical roles that behavioral costs, emotional exhaustion, and awareness of environmental consequences play in shaping farmers’ intentions to recycle agricultural waste, including pesticide packaging, agricultural films, and crop straw. At its core, the study integrates psychological theories with practical insights, setting a precedent for future research and policymaking in sustainable agricultural practices.
The foundational premise of the research rests on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), a well-established model that posits attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control as key predictors of intention and behavior. Within this Chinese agricultural context, the study confirms attitude as the dominant and most consistent factor influencing farmers’ recycling intentions across various waste types. Farmers with stronger positive attitudes toward recycling were markedly more motivated to engage in these environmentally beneficial behaviors, reiterating findings from Galati et al. (2020) and underscoring the universal importance of fostering positive environmental mindsets.
However, the research uncovers a nuanced picture regarding perceived behavioral control. Specifically, it was found that farmers’ belief in their capacity to recycle pesticide packaging effectively was limited. This shortfall stems largely from practical constraints—recycling pesticide packaging in rural settings demands time, human effort, and resources that many farmers perceive as unavailable or insufficient. This insight challenges the assumption that technological interventions alone can facilitate recycling, underscoring the complex, resource-intense nature of certain pro-environmental behaviors and highlighting an area ripe for policy intervention to reduce barriers.
Subjective norms, or the perceived social pressure to perform a behavior, exhibited selective influence across different waste streams. While they significantly affected recycling intentions for pesticide packaging and agricultural films, they bore little impact on crop straw recycling. This divergence contrasts with prior research in Pakistan and other Chinese provinces, where subjective norms were more predictive, suggesting a cultural or contextual variability in the social mechanisms that drive recycling. The authors theorize that the prevalent lack of straw recycling practices among farmers weakens these norms’ influence, as social expectations remain diffuse or ineffective in shaping behavior within this domain.
A central novel contribution of this study lies in its exploration of emotional exhaustion as an inhibitory psychological factor in recycling intentions. Grounded in the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, the analysis elucidates how behavioral costs—manifesting as time, effort, and economic burdens—act as psychological stressors, depleting farmers’ emotional reserves and leading to burnout. This exhaustion, in turn, diminishes their motivation to engage in recycling, revealing a pernicious feedback loop wherein environmental actions become increasingly burdensome and less likely to be pursued. This subtle and significant mediating effect aligns with theoretical frameworks like the stress-strain-outcome model and bolsters prior empirical findings connecting stress and environmental behavior.
Further disaggregation illustrates that the time and effort costs associated with pesticide packaging and mulch film recycling significantly elevate emotional exhaustion, which then depresses recycling behavior. These findings demonstrate the critical need to design interventions that target psychological well-being alongside external barriers, emphasizing that emotional strain can be as impactful as tangible resource constraints. By identifying this mechanism, the study extends the dialogue around environmental behavior beyond rational choice models to incorporate affective and emotional dimensions.
One intriguing revelation is the indirect pathway through which awareness of consequences enhances recycling intentions. This environmental consciousness promotes positive attitudes, decreases emotional exhaustion, and bolsters perceived behavioral control, forming a multi-layered conduit toward pro-environmental action. This nuanced relationship substantiates and expands upon earlier assertions that environmental responsibility catalyzes attitude formation and emotional investment. Furthermore, it complicates the conventional low-cost hypothesis by suggesting that informational interventions that reduce emotional fatigue represent an equally potent strategy to counterbalance high behavioral costs.
The paper also challenges the tendency to lump agricultural waste recycling into a single, low-cost category of environmental behavior. By highlighting the multifaceted cost structures and varied psychological barriers across different waste types, especially the notably high cost of straw recycling, the authors argue for differentiated models and experimental economic approaches that reflect real-world complexities. This perceptive argument calls for tailored behavioral frameworks that recognize heterogeneity both in types of waste and farmer demographics.
Contrary to theoretical expectations, personal norms did not significantly mediate the relationship between awareness of consequences and recycling intentions for pesticide packaging and agricultural films. The authors suggest this may arise from farmers’ difficulty in internalizing abstract environmental harms—such as soil degradation or water contamination—into concrete personal obligations. In contrast, for crop straw, subjective norms did effectively activate personal norms, suggesting that interpersonal and community interactions might be more potent levers for moral motivation within certain contexts, supporting frameworks of social-psychological activation.
At the core of perceived behavioral control are behavioral costs, which this study identifies as an essential, though underexamined underlying factor. High economic, time, and effort costs function as barriers that undermine farmers’ sense of control over recycling actions. Importantly, economic costs particularly inhibit recycling of mulch film and straw through reductions in perceived control, illuminating a crucial pathway by which material constraints translate into attenuated behavioral intentions. This insight enriches the discourse on facilitating pro-environmental behavior by clarifying ambiguous factors noted in prior literature.
The study’s multi-group analyses provide a rich frontier into how demographic variables modulate the psychological dynamics of recycling. Older farmers, who have a deep connection to the land, experience environmental degradation more acutely, which may amplify emotional exhaustion triggered by awareness of environmental consequences. Yet their long history of labor-intensive agriculture means effort costs weigh less heavily on their emotional resources, revealing an age-related resilience that reinforces protective environmental intentions. This aligns with Nature Connectedness Theory and highlights the critical role of generational experience in environmental psychology.
Farmers with a greater share of agricultural income displayed stronger attitudinal responsiveness to environmental awareness, possibly because their livelihoods are more directly tied to environmental health. This economic tie strengthens perceived stakes in environmental degradation, enhancing motivators for waste recycling. Such findings contribute to a growing body of evidence attesting to the significance of contextualized economic dependency in shaping environmental attitudes and behaviors in rural populations.
Education emerges as a key moderator with intriguing implications. Higher-educated farmers experience a more intense emotional exhaustion response to awareness of consequences, plausibly due to a sophisticated yet frustrating understanding of environmental challenges and the limited scope of individual impact. This cognitive–emotional dissonance, manifesting as “knowing but unable to act,” paradoxically drains psychological resources. Conversely, lower-educated farmers may be buffered from this exhaustion due to less precise environmental knowledge, forming a psychological shield from the conflict between awareness and action.
Moreover, emotional exhaustion more significantly dampens perceived behavioral control in lower-educated farmers, eroding their sense of agency and framing recycling behavior as more daunting. Effort costs also differentially influence these groups; higher-educated farmers’ control perceptions are more sensitive to effort demands, while lower-educated groups’ emotional exhaustion is more vulnerable to effort costs. These differential pathways emphasize the heterogeneity of psychological processes across educational strata and call for tailored interventions.
Interestingly, subjective norms wield minimal influence on recycling intentions among farmers with lower education levels, suggesting social pressures or communal judgments are insufficient to motivate environmental behavior change within this segment. This insight challenges assumptions about the universality of social influence and emphasizes the necessity of context-sensitive strategies that account for educational disparities.
In totality, this extensive study offers an integrative lens that bridges behavioral economics, psychology, and environmental science to reveal the intertwined and context-dependent factors shaping agricultural waste recycling. Its pioneering incorporation of emotional exhaustion alongside classical TPB constructs advances a holistic understanding of pro-environmental behavior in rural agricultural settings. The research spotlights the urgent need for multifaceted policies and interventions that address external costs, foster positive attitudes, alleviate psychological strain, and adapt to the educational and demographic diversity of farming communities.
Crucially, these findings underscore that promoting sustainable agricultural practices requires more than infrastructure or technological solutions—it demands addressing the emotional and cognitive burdens farmers bear, supporting them with knowledge that empowers without overwhelming. By illuminating the psychological costs of recycling behaviors and the differential impacts across farmer profiles, this study sets a new benchmark for behavioral environmental research and offers a roadmap for impactful, nuanced environmental stewardship interventions.
Subject of Research:
The combined effects of behavioral costs, awareness of consequences, and emotional exhaustion on Chinese farmers’ behavioral intentions to recycle agricultural waste.
Article Title:
Uncovering the combined effects of behavioral costs, awareness of consequences, and emotional exhaustion on farmers’ behavioral intentions to recycle agricultural waste.
Article References:
Geng, L., Zhang, Y., Liang, X. et al. Uncovering the combined effects of behavioral costs, awareness of consequences, and emotional exhaustion on farmers’ behavioral intentions to recycle agricultural waste. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1787 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06085-z
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