Delegating sustainability: trust and infrastructure in everyday waste practices in Abu Dhabi

This article examines how environmental concern, trust in institutions, and multicultural social configuration shape everyday waste practices in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Drawing on a mixed-methods study combining a representative survey (N = 950) and twelve focus groups (N = 59), it investigates the persistent disconnect between pro-environmental concern and concrete behavioral change, commonly described as the value-action gap, in a rapidly urbanized, highly diverse, non-Western society. Building on sociological theories of practice and environmental governance, the analysis shows that the gap emerges from the interaction of institutional trust, infrastructural conditions, and socially differentiated household arrangements, challenging the idea that limited engagement in domestic waste sorting results from individual attitudes. Residents express broad confidence in government and scientific expertise yet question the transparency and effectiveness of waste management. Access to facilities constitutes the strongest predictor of participation, outweighing socio-demographic variables. Recycling practices vary little across national groups once shared infrastructural conditions are taken into account; however, migration histories and the delegation of domestic labor shape differentiated environmental orientations. By situating Abu Dhabi within global environmental sociology debates, the article argues that the value-action gap is better understood as a structural feature of institutionalized environmental governance than as a deficit of individual motivation.