Unlocking the enigma: Navigating American passivity in e-waste recycling through push-pull mooring insights

Electronic waste (e-waste) presents a significant challenge to global sustainability. Despite governmental and organizational initiatives, consumer participation in e-waste recycling remains notably low, particularly in the United States (U.S.). This underscores the need for a deeper understanding of the behavioral drivers that can overcome status quo bias and facilitate switching from non-recycling to e-waste recycling behavior. While U.S. consumers are generally engaged in conventional recycling, they tend to remain passive when it comes to e-waste, revealing a behavioral gap that previous studies have primarily examined through an adoption lens. To address this gap, the current study introduces a novel theoretical approach by applying the push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework—widely recognized for its explanatory power in switching behavior research—alongside regulatory focus theory (RFT), to better capture the psychological and contextual factors influencing consumers’ transition to e-waste recycling. A total of 225 students at a large public U.S. university participated in the study and we used AMOS 28 to test the model. Our findings indicate that push factors (moral obligation, electronic products obsolescence), pull factors (environmental awareness, coolness), and mooring factors (low convenience, knowledge gap, privacy concerns) strongly predict individuals' switching intentions regarding e-waste recycling. Moreover, through multi-group analyses, we found that environmental awareness, coolness, and knowledge gap significantly influence switching intentions only among promotion-focused individuals, whereas moral obligation and information privacy concerns are significant only for prevention-focused individuals.