Investigating the effect of educational intervention based on The theory of planned behavior on the behavior of household waste segregation among households in Nowshahr

The research was carried out to empower housewives in waste separation as a result of the ever-increasing waste caused by industrial life and its short-term and long-term damaging effects on the environment.

This research was conducted by a semi-experimental intervention method on 60 people (30 intervention group and 30 control group) homemakers of Nowshahr city, who were randomly divided into two intervention and control groups. Face-to-face intervention was conducted over a month with four sessions. The data collection tool was a standard questionnaire containing 22 questions based on the theory of planned behavior. The data were analyzed in two stages the preliminary test and three months after the intervention of the training program through SPSS22 software.

The average age of the participants in the intervention group was 34.7 and in the control group was 34.2. Independent t-tests did not show a significant difference between the intervention and control groups before the educational intervention, but three months after the educational intervention, the average structures of the theory of planned behavior were significantly different except for the structure of subjective norms (p<0.05), indicating that the average of these structures had increased over time in both groups.

The training program based on the theory of planned behavior is effective in improving the behavior of waste separation. Therefore, educational programs regarding the separation of waste from the source should be based on scientific theories and appropriate educational methods for the target group.