The research, led by Prabhakar Sharma and Gyanendra Nath Tiwari, surveyed 226 residents across three Nagaland districts, Kohima, Dimapur, and Chümoukedima, spanning urban, semi-urban, and rural settings. The team anchored their work in the Theory of Planned Behaviour, a widely used psychological framework holding that behaviour flows from three conscious drivers: attitude toward the act, perceived social pressure from others, and perceived behavioural control, the sense that one is able to carry out the behaviour. To this classic trio the researchers added measures of cultural values and perceptions of policy and governance, and they paired the survey with open-ended questions and ten in-depth interviews to capture what residents themselves saw as the real obstacles.

The quantitative results were striking in their asymmetry. Respondents scored highest on items measuring environmental concern and personal responsibility: agreement that plastic waste harms the environment averaged 4.77 on a five-point scale, that reducing plastic use is necessary averaged 4.58, and that one feels personally responsible for proper disposal averaged 4.38. Yet the subscale measuring perceived behavioural control, covering access to disposal points, confidence in segregating waste at home, and the availability of affordable alternatives, was the weakest of all, averaging just 2.97. In other words, people knew the problem was real and felt it was theirs to solve, but they did not feel equipped to act.

When the researchers ran a hierarchical multiple regression to see which constructs actually predicted self-reported waste-management behaviour, the pattern upended expectations. Subjective norms, the perception of what neighbours, friends, and the community expect and practice, emerged as by far the strongest predictor, with a standardized coefficient of 0.485. Cultural values contributed next, at 0.251, followed by attitude at 0.186. Perceived behavioural control, the variable that classical theory often casts as decisive, contributed essentially nothing once the other factors were accounted for, with a coefficient of negative 0.023 and a p-value of 0.661. Although control showed a small bivariate correlation with behaviour, that association was entirely absorbed by its overlap with subjective norms. The final model explained 44.5 percent of the variance in self-reported practice.

Just as telling was what did not matter. Adding residents’ perceptions of policy and governance, whether the plastic ban was enforced, whether government was managing waste efficiently, whether public information was adequate, improved the model by exactly nothing, a change in explained variance of zero with a p-value of 0.908. Residents clearly viewed enforcement as weak: agreement that the plastic ban was strictly enforced averaged only 2.85, and belief in efficient government management averaged 2.88. But those dim views of the state did not independently predict what people actually did with their plastic. The machinery of governance, in this setting, appears to shape behaviour only indirectly, if at all.

The qualitative strand of the study filled in the human texture behind these numbers. Among roughly 131 open-ended survey responses, the most frequently cited barrier to proper disposal was lack of awareness and education, named by 67 percent, followed by inadequate infrastructure and facilities at 58 percent and weak enforcement at 32 percent. In the separate interview sample, infrastructure deficits and the absence of plastic-specific traditional beliefs were rated as very high intensity themes, raised unprompted by eight or more of the ten participants. One interviewee captured a widespread mindset bluntly: people consider all waste equal, so everything belongs in the same bin. Traditional Naga practices, built around biodegradable materials and low-waste living, simply never developed categories for a plastic-dominated waste stream.

When the researchers integrated the two strands of evidence, the most revealing result was a divergence rather than an agreement. Infrastructure was overwhelmingly salient in how residents talked about the problem, yet individually perceived control carried no unique statistical weight in the regression. The authors propose, cautiously, that infrastructure may operate less as a direct constraint on individual action and more as a structural condition that shapes community norms and expectations, so that where collection points are absent, responsible disposal simply never becomes a shared local standard. That mediational hypothesis could not be tested with the study’s cross-sectional design, but it offers a concrete target for future longitudinal research.

The theoretical implications extend beyond Nagaland. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is a deliberative-reasoning model, assuming that people weigh attitudes and consequences before acting. A growing literature argues that everyday waste disposal is often habitual, cued by routine and context rather than conscious reflection, and the survey instrument used here was not designed to detect such automatic processes. The authors also flag social-desirability bias as a risk, since normatively loaded items about responsibility and cleanliness may inflate self-reports, and they acknowledge that the attitude and cultural values subscales showed weak internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values of 0.35 and 0.46 respectively, well below conventional thresholds. The cultural values finding, they stress, should be read as a promising but tentative extension rather than an established determinant, particularly because exploratory factor analysis showed some of its items blending into the subjective norms factor.

For policy, the practical message is unambiguous. Awareness campaigns alone are unlikely to close the gap between what people believe and what they do, because belief is not the binding constraint. Instead, the authors argue, interventions should centre community-based and norm-oriented strategies, enlisting the village councils, religious organisations, and youth groups that already function as trusted arbiters of local expectation. Respondents themselves pointed in the same direction: awareness and education campaigns were the most frequently proposed solution, cited by 72 percent of open-ended respondents and 90 percent of interviewees, followed by better infrastructure at 53 and 70 percent respectively, and stricter enforcement at 38 and 60 percent. Ideas such as plastic buy-back schemes, subsidies for reusable alternatives, and regular community clean-up days surfaced repeatedly.

The study has clear limits. Its sample, recruited through stratified quotas combined with convenience sampling, skewed young and male, with roughly half of respondents under 25, and all behaviour measures were self-reported rather than validated against observed practice or objective infrastructure audits. The cross-sectional design forbids causal claims, and two exploratory moderation tests, whether residential area or cultural values changed the strength of other predictors, failed to reach significance. Still, the core result stands as a genuinely useful contribution: in a collectivist, community-governed society, the strongest lever for changing plastic behaviour is not the individual conscience but the collective gaze. If Nagaland’s village councils and youth groups begin treating segregation as a shared expectation rather than a private virtue, the plastic choking its urban slopes may finally have somewhere to go other than the open fire.

Subject of Research: Psychosocial and cultural determinants of plastic waste management behaviour in Nagaland, India

Article Title: Psychosocial, cultural, and structural determinants of plastic waste management practices in Nagaland, India: A mixed-methods study using the theory of planned behaviour

Article References: Sharma, P., & Tiwari, G. N. (2026). Psychosocial, cultural, and structural determinants of plastic waste management practices in Nagaland, India: A mixed-methods study using the theory of planned behaviour. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 32, Article 101539. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101539

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101539

Keywords: plastic waste, Nagaland, theory of planned behaviour, subjective norms, waste management, mixed methods, environmental psychology, cultural values, India, recycling, community governance, developing countries

The research, conducted by Bui Huy Khoi of the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, set out to disentangle the psychological machinery that connects sustainability perceptions to buying decisions in the cosmetics sector. Rather than asking consumers directly whether they intend to buy green products, the study built a structural model in which four sustainability-related factors, green attitude, green subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and green advertising, were tested for their influence on brand trust, which in turn was tested as a driver of purchase intention. The design reflects a growing recognition in consumer psychology that intentions are rarely shaped by attitudes alone; they are mediated by layers of belief, social context and confidence in the seller.

Methodologically, the study took a mixed-methods approach. In the first, qualitative phase, the researcher refined and contextualised the measurement scales, ensuring that the survey instruments captured what green attitude, social pressure, control and advertising genuinely mean to cosmetics consumers in an emerging market rather than importing constructs wholesale from Western literature. In the second, quantitative phase, survey data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling, or PLS-SEM, a statistical technique well suited to testing networks of hypothesised relationships between latent psychological variables. PLS-SEM estimates how strongly each construct predicts the next, allowing the researcher to quantify both direct effects and the indirect, mediated pathways that run through brand trust.

The results are striking in their asymmetry. Three of the four sustainability factors, green attitude, perceived behavioural control and green advertising, exerted a significant positive impact on brand trust. In plain terms, consumers who hold favourable dispositions toward environmentally friendly products, who feel capable of actually choosing and using green cosmetics, and who are exposed to credible green advertising, come to trust the brands behind those products. That trust then carries the weight: brand trust mediated the relationship between all three of these factors and purchase intention, acting as the bridge between what consumers believe about sustainability and what they decide to buy.

The fourth factor, however, refused to cooperate. Green subjective norms, the perceived social pressure from family, friends and reference groups to buy sustainable products, showed no statistically significant influence within the model. This null result is arguably the most provocative finding in the paper. Much of the classical literature on pro-environmental behaviour, rooted in the theory of planned behaviour, treats subjective norms as a core pillar of intention formation. The study’s finding suggests that, at least among the young, digitally engaged consumers surveyed in this emerging-market setting, the decision to buy green cosmetics is not primarily a social conformity play. People are not buying sustainable lipstick because their friends approve; they are buying it because they trust the brand and feel personally able to make the choice.

Why would social norms fail while personal attitudes and perceived control succeed? One plausible reading, consistent with the study’s framing, is that cosmetics are a highly personal, identity-laden product category. Choices about skin, scent and appearance are made at the level of the individual mirror, not the dinner table. In a digital-first consumer environment, information about a brand’s environmental credentials arrives through advertising and online content rather than through face-to-face social endorsement, which may weaken the channel through which subjective norms traditionally operate. The author is careful to caution, however, that this pattern should not be interpreted as broadly generalizable across consumer segments or markets; norms may matter far more in other cultures, age groups or product categories.

The mediation finding deserves particular attention because it reframes how sustainability marketing works. If green attitudes and green advertising influenced purchase intention directly, the managerial prescription would be simple: make consumers feel positive and keep advertising. But the model shows that these factors work on intention largely through trust. Sustainability perceptions are, in effect, an input into a trust-building process, and trust is the currency that gets spent at the checkout. This has a sobering implication for an industry plagued by greenwashing accusations. When a brand’s environmental claims are perceived as exaggerated or false, the damage is not confined to the credibility of the claim itself; it corrodes the very mechanism through which all sustainability messaging converts into sales.

For managers, the study’s practical message is pointed. In this specific context, building trust through credible green communication and enhancing consumers’ perceived behavioural control may be more effective than relying on social influence mechanisms. Credible communication means verifiable claims, transparency about ingredients and sourcing, and advertising that can withstand scrutiny rather than vague eco-imagery. Enhancing perceived control means lowering the practical barriers to green choices: clear labelling, accessible price points, easy availability and product performance that matches conventional alternatives. A consumer who believes a green cosmetic will work, can find it easily and can afford it is a consumer positioned to trust the brand behind it, and trust is what converts belief into a purchase.

The study also contributes to a broader scholarly conversation about emerging markets. Much of the sustainability marketing literature has been built on data from Europe, North America and developed East Asia, where environmental awareness has had decades to mature. Emerging markets present a different landscape: rapidly growing middle classes, younger demographics, high digital engagement and environmental concerns that often arrive alongside, rather than after, mass consumption. Understanding how green perceptions function in such settings matters not only for the cosmetics industry but for any sector betting that the next generation of consumers will pay for sustainability. The finding that trust, not social pressure, is the pivotal variable offers a testable hypothesis for researchers working in other emerging-market contexts.

There are, of course, limits to what any single survey-based model can establish. Structural equation modelling identifies associations consistent with a theoretical pathway; it cannot prove causation in the experimental sense, and the study’s own author flags that the limited role of subjective norms in this sample should not be over-read. The sample’s composition, young and digitally engaged consumers, means the findings may not extend to older shoppers or to markets where green consumption follows different social dynamics. Still, the study’s contribution is clear and well-earned: it clarifies the relative importance of selected green factors in shaping brand trust and, indirectly, purchase intention, and it elevates trust from a vague buzzword to a measurable, mediating mechanism. In an industry where green claims multiply faster than the evidence behind them, that is a finding worth trusting.

Subject of Research: The effect of sustainability perceptions and brand trust on purchase intention for green cosmetics

Article Title: Sustainability, brand trust, and purchase intent in the cosmetics industry

Article References: Khoi, B. H. (2026). Sustainability, brand trust, and purchase intent in the cosmetics industry. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04845-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04845-8

Keywords: sustainability marketing, brand trust, purchase intention, green advertising, green attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, cosmetics industry, PLS-SEM, consumer behaviour, greenwashing, emerging markets

The study is built on the norm activation model, a well-established framework in environmental psychology that explains how prosocial and pro-environmental behavior emerges from a chain of psychological events. In its classic form, the model proposes that when individuals become aware of the negative consequences of not acting, and when they ascribe responsibility for those consequences to themselves, a personal moral norm is activated. This activated personal norm then drives behavioral intention. The model has been applied successfully to energy conservation, recycling, and green purchasing in many contexts, but it has rarely been tested in developing regions, where waste management infrastructure and cultural norms differ markedly from the wealthy countries where most of this research has historically been conducted.

Hidalgo-Crespo extends the model in a significant way. Beyond the core chain of awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and personal norms, the study incorporates environmental consciousness as an upstream driver and adds subjective norms, the perceived social expectations of important others, drawn from the theory of reasoned action tradition. The extended model then predicts two distinct outcome variables: intentions to recycle and intentions toward green consumerism, meaning the willingness to purchase environmentally friendly products. By treating these two behaviors separately rather than lumping them together as a single pro-environmental intention, the study acknowledges that recycling a bottle and choosing a green product are psychologically different acts, shaped by different contextual pressures and different kinds of motivation.

The empirical foundation of the work is a cross-sectional survey of 1,198 respondents in Guayas Province, a coastal region of Ecuador that includes the country’s largest city, Guayaquil. Participants completed instruments measuring the Big Five personality traits, which are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, along with the constructs of the extended norm activation model and the two intention measures. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling, or PLS-SEM, a technique well suited to complex models with multiple constructs and pathways. To explore personality-based differences, the researcher applied cluster analysis, a statistical method that groups individuals according to their profiles across the five traits, and then used multigroup analysis to test whether the structural relationships in the model differed significantly between the resulting personality clusters.

The headline result is that personal norms and subjective norms emerge as significant predictors of both recycling intentions and green consumerism intentions. In other words, people intend to reduce waste when they feel a moral obligation to do so and when they perceive that the people around them expect such behavior. This dual pathway is important because it suggests that internal moral activation and external social expectation operate in parallel, each contributing independently to the intention to act. Environmental consciousness, meanwhile, was found to feed positively into awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility, confirming its role as an upstream factor that primes the moral chain of the norm activation model. People who are more consciously attuned to environmental issues are more likely to recognize the harms of waste and to accept personal responsibility for preventing them.

Yet the most novel contribution of the study lies in what the multigroup analysis revealed. The strength and coherence of these normative pathways varied across the personality clusters identified in the sample. This means that the psychological mechanism linking, say, awareness of consequences to a personal norm, or a personal norm to a recycling intention, does not operate with the same force in everyone. For some personality profiles, the moral chain of the norm activation model appears tightly coupled, so that recognizing a problem reliably produces a sense of duty and then an intention to act. For others, the links are weaker or structured differently, revealing heterogeneous psychological mechanisms underlying what looks, from the outside, like the same pro-environmental attitude. Personality, in this framing, is not merely another predictor to add to a regression equation but a lens that refracts the entire motivational process.

The study also uncovered an asymmetry between the two behavioral outcomes. Recycling intentions appeared more strongly associated with contextual and situational factors than green consumerism intentions did. This makes intuitive sense once one considers the mechanics of the two behaviors. Recycling depends heavily on infrastructure: whether collection points exist, whether sorting systems are convenient, and whether the immediate environment makes the behavior easy or difficult. Green consumerism, by contrast, is a market-based choice that may be driven more by internal values and norms, since purchasing decisions are made within stores and online spaces where social and situational pressures differ. For waste policy in developing regions, this distinction matters, because investments in recycling infrastructure may yield returns that no amount of moral persuasion can match for that specific behavior.

The setting of the research gives these findings particular weight. Developing regions remain underrepresented in environmental psychology research, even as they confront rapidly growing waste streams and face some of the sharpest consequences of unsustainable consumption. Ecuador, like many Latin American countries, has been expanding recycling programs and environmental education initiatives, but the effectiveness of such programs depends on understanding what actually motivates citizens. By grounding the analysis in a large sample from Guayas Province, the study offers evidence that the theoretical machinery developed largely in Europe and North America can be meaningfully applied elsewhere, but only with careful attention to how personality and context reshape the motivational pathways in local populations.

The practical implications reach directly into the design of environmental communication campaigns. If personality clusters moderate the normative pathways to intention, then interventions could be tailored rather than universalized. A campaign emphasizing personal responsibility for consequences might resonate strongly with one cluster, while a campaign highlighting the expectations of family and community, thereby activating subjective norms, might work better for another. Personality-informed segmentation, long a staple of commercial marketing, could become a tool of environmental policy, allowing governments and NGOs to allocate their communication budgets more efficiently and to avoid the frustration of campaigns that consistently fail to move particular segments of the public. The study suggests that such differentiated strategies may support more effective waste reduction overall.

The research, which received no external funding and was conducted in accordance with internationally accepted ethical standards including written informed consent from all participants, ultimately delivers a message that extends well beyond waste management. Human behavior is the decisive variable in nearly every environmental challenge, from plastic pollution to climate change, and the models used to predict that behavior are increasingly sophisticated. This study pushes that sophistication one step further by insisting that the predictors themselves, the moral norms and social expectations that drive action, are filtered through stable individual differences in personality. Sustainability science, the findings imply, must come to terms with psychological heterogeneity, not as noise in the data, but as a fundamental feature of the human systems it seeks to change. In the effort to build greener societies, knowing who people are may be just as important as knowing what they believe.

Subject of Research: Psychosocial determinants of waste reduction intentions, including the norm activation model and Big Five personality effects, in Ecuador

Article Title: An extended norm activation model of waste reduction intentions with personality cluster effects

Article References: An extended norm activation model of waste reduction intentions with personality cluster effects. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04624-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04624-5

Keywords: waste reduction, norm activation model, recycling intentions, green consumerism, Big Five personality traits, cluster analysis, PLS-SEM, environmental psychology, Ecuador, subjective norms, personal norms, sustainable behavior

Researchers Seyed Mohammad Javad Sobhani, Maryam Karimi Malek-Abadi and Morteza Taki surveyed 231 forest-dwelling households across 31 villages in Khuzestan Province, using multi-stage stratified random sampling drawn from a population of roughly 3,200 households. Their instrument measured eight latent constructs on a five-point Likert scale, from perceived usefulness and ease of use to cost burden, institutional trust, environmental awareness, subjective norms, behavioral intention and usage continuity. Data were collected face-to-face by trained local enumerators between June 2025 and February 2026, achieving a 93.1 percent effective response rate after quality screening.

The study’s central theoretical move is the introduction of an extended Socio-Ecological Technology Acceptance Model, or SETAM, which fuses the classic Technology Acceptance Model with the tripartite Social Acceptance Framework distinguishing socio-political, market and community acceptance. The authors argue that established frameworks such as TAM2, TAM3, UTAUT and UTAUT2 were built for stable institutional environments with formal credit systems and accessible after-sales markets, and therefore translate poorly to informal economies where upfront solar investment is psychologically weighed against immediate subsistence needs rather than long-term amortization.

SETAM departs from its predecessors in four ways. It folds maintenance literacy and post-installation support networks into perceived ease of use, recognizing that rural servicing logistics matter as much as technical complexity. It situates cost perception within irregular income streams. It treats institutional trust as a gatekeeper capable of amplifying or suppressing every other adoption driver. And it elevates subjective norms in tightly knit communities from a transient social influence to a structural determinant of whether a technology is seen as legitimate at all.

Empirically, the team combined Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling with an artificial neural network to capture both linear causal pathways and non-linear thresholds. The model explained 58.3 percent of the variance in behavioral intention, with predictive relevance confirmed through blindfolding and PLSpredict procedures. The single-hidden-layer neural network, trained with Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation and validated through Monte Carlo cross-validation, achieved a mean test RMSE of 0.178 against a training RMSE of 0.117, indicating robust generalization without overfitting.

The results are unambiguous about what drives adoption. Subjective norms emerged as the strongest predictor, with a standardized path coefficient of 0.33 and the highest normalized importance in the neural network at 100 percent. In collectivist settings, solar panels become socially legitimate only when neighbors endorse them and local leaders approve. Perceived cost and maintenance burden ranked second as the most formidable barrier, with a negative coefficient of 0.31. Institutional trust followed at 0.26, while perceived usefulness registered 0.28. Environmental awareness influenced intention primarily indirectly, mediated through perceived usefulness, accounting for 56 percent of its total effect—a finding that challenges awareness-centric campaigning.

Perhaps the most policy-relevant discovery comes from the neural network’s partial dependence analysis: adoption intention rises sharply only once perceived cost falls below a Likert-scale tipping point of 2.8. Cost perception, the authors conclude, does not behave linearly. Households operating under tight budget constraints experience a psychological threshold, below which marginal reductions in perceived financial burden yield disproportionate gains in willingness to adopt. Uniform subsidies, they argue, are inefficient because they ignore this tipping point; tiered, income-sensitive financing aimed at the households with the highest perceived burden would deliver far greater leverage per unit of public spending.

Multi-group analysis added a further nuance: first-time adopters are significantly more sensitive to cost and maintenance concerns than experienced solar users, with path coefficients of negative 0.423 versus negative 0.194 and a significant group difference at p equals 0.018. Institutional trust, by contrast, operated as a universal enabler with no significant difference between users and non-users, suggesting that credible subsidies, transparent warranty frameworks and consistent government communication reduce perceived risk for everyone. Robustness checks, including Gaussian copula tests for endogeneity and measurement invariance testing, confirmed that these estimates withstand omitted-variable bias and hold across education levels.

The authors translate their findings into four evidence-informed policy pathways for fossil-rich developing economies. First, replace uniform subsidies with tiered, income-sensitive co-payment structures that build financial literacy alongside ownership. Second, institutionalize community-based maintenance cooperatives—training local technicians, establishing spare-part supply chains and creating peer-support networks—to convert post-installation anxiety into sustained usage. Third, shift from top-down hardware deployment to participatory governance in which local leaders, forest authorities and energy agencies co-design subsidy timelines and guarantees. Fourth, exploit the power of social diffusion through visible demonstration installations and testimonial-based outreach, which the data suggest may be more cost-effective than traditional awareness campaigns, especially when reinforced by institutional credibility.

The stakes extend well beyond household convenience. The study frames solar adoption as a dual-purpose intervention advancing both SDG 7 on affordable clean energy and SDG 13 on climate action: every household that swaps firewood for photovoltaics eases deforestation pressure, reduces indoor air pollution and cuts carbon emissions from biomass combustion. By positioning social acceptance as a structural driver rather than an implementation afterthought, the Zagros research offers a transferable diagnostic framework for biomass-dependent communities across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Its core message is deceptively simple: the energy transition will be won not on rooftops alone, but in the trust between governments and communities, and in the quiet consensus of neighbors watching a neighbor’s panels work.

Subject of Research: Socio-behavioral drivers and institutional enablers of household solar energy adoption among forest-dwelling communities in the Zagros Mountains of Iran.

Article Title: From fuelwood to photovoltaics: Socio-behavioral drivers and institutional enablers of household solar energy adoption in fossil-rich developing contexts

Article References: From fuelwood to photovoltaics: Socio-behavioral drivers and institutional enablers of household solar energy adoption in fossil-rich developing contexts. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101515

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101515

Keywords: solar energy adoption, Zagros Mountains, technology acceptance, institutional trust, subjective norms, energy poverty, PLS-SEM, artificial neural network, renewable energy policy, fuelwood, SDG 7, just energy transition