How to leverage the role of social capital in pro-environmental behavior: A case study of residents’ express waste recycling behavior in China

The rapid development of the express delivery industry brings convenience to people, while the large number of Express delivery packaging waste also imposes a burden on the environment. This paper chooses Chinese urban residents as the research object, and takes the residents’ Express waste recycling behavior as the research background. By using path analysis, this paper intends to measure and analyze the relationship among social capital, situational factors and individual differences variables in the context of Express waste recycling behavior. The result indicates that among the social capital variables, the direct and indirect roles of the social community trust in each acting path are extremely obvious and the degree of its association with the social community relationship is the highest, which indicates that a community should create an opportunity for the residents to communicate, consolidate and improve their trust bond with one another. As the intervention measure of Express waste recycling behavior, the situation variables must pay attention to the importance of the timing of the promulgation of measures. Furthermore, the residents with master degree and or aged 31–40 should become the focus of future research. This research not only provides theoretical support for the study of Express waste recycling behavior from the perspective of social capital, it also provides reference to relevant government departments and communities so that they can guide residents to participate actively in more Pro-environment behavior. •Express waste recycling behavior has become a newly developing pro-environment behavior (PEB).•Using Social capital as the core variable can offer a novel research outlook for other PEB.•It has figured out the driving effect of PEB from a more detailed and individualized perspective.•The path analysis can be used as a method reference for behavioral research in other disciplines.