Building a Low-Carbon Community: Influencing Factors of Residents’ Idle Resource-Sharing Behaviors

Abstract

Promoting the sharing of idle resources to community residents is a potential means to building a low-carbon community. This study examined three communities with different attributes (college/university, middle and high income, and the elderly). An extended hypothesis model was constructed based on the theory of planned behavior. The influencing factors of community residents facing idle resource-sharing services were explored. Based on the equal sampling method, 100 questionnaires were randomly distributed in each community to verify the validity of the hypothesis model. The results show that residents’ attitudes, subjective behavioral norms, perceived behavioral control, service expectations, and environmental motivations positively influence residents’ behavioral intention to share their idle resources. The residents’ service expectations for idle resource-sharing are the most critical. Moreover, in terms of community attributes, its attitudes, subjective behavioral norms, and perceived behavioral control significantly influence residents’ behavioral intention to share idle resources. Specifically, the attitudes in the middle- and high-income community have opposite effects on residents from the attitudes in the college/university community and the elderly community. The hypothesis model proposed in this study provides a reference for building a low-carbon community from the perspective of residents’ restriction of resource-sharing.