Starting from 2025, the world’s oceans will receive an estimated 17.5 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste annually from coastal cities within the globe (Jambeck et al., 2015). Rivers are reported to contribute an average of 1.8 million tonnes of mismanaged plastics annually via inland sources to the oceans (Lebreton et al., 2017). This will affect not only marine life and the environment but also public health and livelihoods (Beaumont et al., 2019; Agamuthu et al., 2019; Welden, 2020; Jambeck et al., 2018). Estimates show that developing countries will contribute at least 80% of the total mismanaged waste that will move from land to the oceans (Schmidt et al., 2017). In most cities of such economies, the solid waste management (SWM) systems are highly underdeveloped with low-to-medium collection coverage and waste capture (Wilson et al., 2015; Godfrey et al., 2019; Oduro-Appiah et al., 2020; Guerrero et al., 2013). Consequently, significant amounts of uncollected municipal solid waste (MSW) are disposed of in drains and on vacant lands; which are washed down eventually by stormwater into rivers and the oceans (Godfrey et al., 2018).
In the year 2020, Ghana was reported to have leaked about “80,000 tonnes of plastic waste into water bodies” (Global Plastic Action Partnership, 2021). Insufficient MSW collection coverage (Oduro-Appiah et al., 2020) as well as littering on land and along beaches are major contributory factors to the plastic leakage. The leakage is projected to increase by four folds within the next two decades with an anticipated increase in economic growth and plastic consumption, (Global Plastic Action Partnership, 2021). Reversing the increasing trends of plastic pollution in freshwater bodies and the growth of waste patches within the world’s oceans would call for modernization in both municipal solid waste management (MSWM) and litter prevention, especially in developing country cities (Leal Filho et al., 2021).
Littering is the inappropriate discarding of any piece of solid waste (SW) in a public place outside designated trash receptacles; it is a persistent problem in the world with prominence in most developing countries (Tjell, 2010; Moqbel et al., 2020). In Ghana, littering is rampant and somehow socially acceptable, as it is in other developing countries of the global south (Farage et al., 2021). Neither MSW professionals nor the government have sustainable policies to address the problem; the prevailing system being an end-of-pipe management technique where communities are allowed to litter their environment before cleaning and evacuation.
Within the past decade, the closest the government of Ghana has come to solve the problem of littering and the leakage of MSW into freshwater and marine environments has been the introduction of a national sanitation day and a tax on some imported plastic materials (Adam et al., 2020); with the objectives to promote community inclusive cleaning of the environment and to decrease the consumption and leakage of single-use plastics, respectively. However, the outcomes have been counterproductive and far from the goal (Adam et al., 2020; Mensah, 2020; Abalo et al., 2017), notwithstanding the huge costs of such interventions to the state. It is thus not uncommon to see litter and uncollected MSW washed into drains, streams and rivers (Odonkor and Sallar, 2021); contributing to perennial flooding with loss of lives and properties, especially in the capital city, Accra (Mensah and Ahadzie, 2020; Amoako and Inkoom, 2018).
One of such floods, which occurred on June 3, 2015, in the greater Accra region of the country had a devastating effect ––over 50,000 inhabitants were displaced, along with the loss of 150 human lives and an estimated US$ 100 million in properties (Kpanou et al., 2021); compelling politicians and professionals alike to seek a comprehensive pathway with regard to the implementation of an MSW collection improvement and a litter control strategy, as part of other interventions aimed at reducing the flood risk and enhancing the resilience of the region (Government of Ghana, 2017; World Bank, 2019).
However, because litter prevention is considered a pro-environmental behavior (Homburg and Stolberg, 2006), an understanding of the prominent determinants and values that inform individual litter prevention intentions may offer significant clues to support and sustain the development and implementation of evidenced-based and theory-driven antilittering behavior change interventions (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014; Steg, 2016; Chaudhary et al., 2021).
The scholarly literature on littering and litter prevention recommends the provision of adequate trash receptacles, the promotion of environmental-cleanliness, social norms, personal norms, penalties, incentives and social marketing tools to address littering behavior (Chaudhary et al., 2021; Moqbel et al., 2020; Ojedokun, 2013); however, the paucity of such literature on developed countries (Al-mosa et al., 2017a), alongside the varying outcomes of such interventions suggests that litter prevention beliefs and intentions may be context-specific (Weaver, 2015; Al-mosa et al., 2020), varying from place to place (Freije et al., 2019).
To date, only three studies related to littering and litter prevention behavior in Ghana have been identified in the peer-reviewed literature. One assessed the extent of litter pollution at four beaches along the coast in the greater Accra region through a survey (Van Dyck et al., 2016). Another explored the antecedents of littering behavior among University students through interviews (Amankwah-Poku and Ofori, 2020) and the third used a socio-cognitive theory of behavior to predict household’s waste disposal behavior (Tweneboah-Koduah et al., 2019), with an implied reference to littering.
This article uses an extended model of the reasoned action approach (RAA) to explore the predominant latent constructs and beliefs that may influence individual intentions with regard to litter prevention in Ghana. The use of theory and especially the RAA for the prediction and design of interventions targeted at reducing littering behavior has been found to be applicable in the scholarly literature (Al-mosa et al., 2017a; Chaudhary et al., 2021; Ojedokun et al., 2022; Brown et al., 2010). Being the first of its kind within the country, the objective is two-fold, namely: (1) to determine the influencing factors that may support practitioners to develop research-based litter prevention behavior change interventions for the region, and (2) to provide a baseline data that may support the implementation of the behavioral components of a national plastic action roadmap that seeks to reduce plastic leakage in Ghanaian waters and the oceans (Global Plastic Action Partnership, 2021).
The article builds further on the work of Tweneboah-Kodua et al., 2019, with a point of departure in two key areas, namely: (1) the use of formative research to elicit the relevant beliefs within the target population and (2) the addition of a fourth latent construct, moral norms, to extend the original RAA. Moral norms are individual perceptions of the ethical appropriateness or inappropriateness of performing a behavior (McMahon and Byrne, 2008), and it is reported to improve the predictive viability of pro-environmental behaviors such as litter prevention and source separation (Godin et al., 2005; Oduro-Appiah et al., 2022). This research defines moral norms as the individuals’ perceived principles about the ethical appropriateness of preventing the littering of the environment.
Formative research supports researchers in the design of applicable survey instruments by providing them with the prominent beliefs of the intended audience (Downs and Hausenblas, 2005); thereby preventing them from using previous research items and/or predetermined beliefs, both of which may lead to unreliable and unrealistic outcomes (Ajzen, 2015). The RAA was selected for this research because of its ability to support the prediction of pro-environmental behaviors (Yuriev et al., 2020; Ojedokun et al., 2022; Cudjoe et al., 2022), alongside its adaptability to the addition of new constructs onto the original model (Miller, 2017). Extending the RAA to increase its predictive viability is also recommended in literature (Graham-Rowe et al., 2015; Fishbein and Ajzen, 2011; Wang et al., 2022).
The rest of this article consist of seven sections: section 2 describes the RAA theoretical framework; the study area and its prevalence to flooding are discussed in section 3, whilst section 4 discusses the research methodology. Sections 5 and 6 present and discuss the statistical results, whilst Sections 7 and 8 are dedicated to the study limitations and conclusions, respectively.