Abstract or Keywords
Plastic consumption and disposal has detrimental effects on the natural environment and human health, yet demand for plastic continues to rise. College students remain an important, yet understudied, group that has the potential to drastically alter plastic consumption now and in the future. The present study is part of a larger project focusing on reducing single use plastic among college students and communities in two coastal locations - Eckerd College in St. Petersburg and the University of North Florida (UNF) in Jacksonville - using behavioral theory and a custom plastic reduction challenge app. The purpose of this pilot study is to test the behavioral survey and app that will be used in the larger study. A pilot sample of 47 UNF students (78.7 % women), ranging from 18-38 years old, vohmteered to participate in the pilot in exchange for extra credit in their courses. Participants used an app to record their use and refusals of plastic items during a week-long challenge to reduce plastic consumption. After the Plastic Challenge App, they completed an online survey assessing plastic use behavior and intentions, subjective norms (perceptions that others want them to reduce plastic), attitudes (evaluations of plastic use), and perceived behavioral control (beliefs that they can control their plastic use) based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Participants reported the highest levels of refusal for plastic bags and highest levels of use for plastic bottles. Additionally, the plastic use reports from the app correlated strongly with the self-reported plastic use from the survey providing evidence of convergent validity for the app. The results of an exploratory regression indicated that the TPB model was significant in predicting plastic use intentions, F[3,43] = 4.14, p = .012. Though underpowered, this study provides initial evidence that subjective norms significantly affected participant's intentions toward single-use plastics. As expected, the TPB model predicted single use plastic behavior intentions and recordings of plastic use in the app related to responses to the survey. This lends support for the validity of the behavioral survey and fit for the behavioral model. Further analyses on larger samples will further test the effect of the app on TPB constructs and plastic use behavior by randomly assigning participants to use the app to track plastic consumption or to a control condition and comparing their survey results.