Key determinants of willingness to support policy measures on recycling: A case study in Hong Kong

•Determinants of policy support for recycling were investigated.•Two types of policy tools for encouraging recycling were differentiated.•Attitude, past behaviour & policy effectiveness influence support for inducement.•External influence & perceived benefits influence support for capacity building. Over the past three decades, the municipal solid waste in Hong Kong had increased by nearly 80% while the population growth was merely 36%. This indicated that the people in Hong Kong were producing waste at an alarming rate. This problem should be addressed systematically. Recycling had been considered as one of the major strategies in the waste management framework both in Hong Kong and across the globe. Hong Kong people have become more outspoken about their demands and asked for higher degree of participation in policymaking since the change of sovereignty in 1997. Therefore, policy makers should understand the determinants of policy support for recycling so as to address the environmental concerns and the rising sentiments of people in policy participation. Previous studies had identified key factors influencing people's willingness to support policy measures in various policy domains. Nevertheless, there is no comprehensive list of well-established constructs in predicting policy support on recycling and little is known about the key psychological determinants in predicting people's support for different policy tools. To research this issue that has parallels in other countries, a model is developed and tested in this study with a sample of 246 people in Hong Kong. The results showed that support for inducement policy measures is influenced by attitude, past behaviour and perceived policy effectiveness, while support for capacity-building policy measures is influenced by external influences and perceived benefits.