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The paper aims to understand the young residents’ household waste intentions through place attachment (PA) approach where place dependency (PD) and place identity (PLI) influence recycling intentions (RIs). Furthermore, the effect of norms (both subjective and moral) on residents’ association with PLI was also analyzed.

The conceptual model, including the hypothesized relationship between variables, was established through relevant literature. The study extends the theory of planned behavior (TPB) through a place-based approach in young residents’ household waste RIs. The proposed conceptual model also replaced the position of norms (subjective and moral) as antecedents to PLI in the proposed extended and modified TPB model. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has been used for the statistical analysis of the data. The questionnaires were distributed digitally. The convenience sampling approach was adopted for collecting data.

The results tenably billed the inclusion of placed-based approach in the TPB and norms (subjective and moral) in predicting PLI of young residents. All the alternative hypotheses in the proposed model were accepted. The predictive power of RIs was 41.4%.

The research only considered the educated and financially opulent residents, among whom the waste disposal system was well established and may have led to favorable results. The study only limits to measuring intentions, and its organic nature opens vistas for future research studies where more variables could be agglutinated to achieve pronounced prediction power and also further measure actual recycling behavior and practice.

The study adds to pragmatic implications for local governments and municipalities where the waste collection apparatuses could capitalize on the findings to achieve efficiency in household waste collection and recycling.

With young generation of residents at the helm for forging a cleaner environment, the study motivates environmental enthusiasts and social scientists to better understand household waste RIs. The study will help young generation to become more sensitized towards the environment by making green changes in daily disposal habits.

The study explored two prospects. First, PA (place dependence and place identity) was added as an external variable and precedent to RIs, and second, the norms (both subjective and moral) were taken as antecedents to place identity.

The study attempted to gauge the relative effectiveness of celebrity and product image match-up in comparison to non-celebrity attractive endorsers for two distinct high involvement situations. Also, due to the expected demographic diversity among target consumers, the study aimed at assessing the impact of respondent's age and gender on the effectiveness of image match-up.

Building on the three-order hierarchy model, two experiments were conducted (utilising celebrity and non-celebrity endorsers) for two high involvement hierarchies, i.e. standard learning and dissonance/attribution. Through fictitious print advertisement, the experiments assessed the effectiveness of the match-up in terms of consumer attitudes towards advertisement and brand and intentions to purchase.

The match-up consistently and significantly outperformed non-celebrity attractive endorser in case of standard learning hierarchy. The same conclusion was not established for dissonance/attribution hierarchy due to the lack of significant results. The findings also suggest that the match-up subdues the impact of consumer's gender and age on consumer attitudes only in case of standard learning hierarchy.

The study provides interesting theoretical implication by challenging a widely held postulation about the applicability of celebrity and product match-up under high involvement.

The research provides the practitioners with a better understanding of important issues, mainly, whether to use a celebrity endorser and selecting the right celebrity, especially if high involvement is expected.

Previous research concerning celebrity endorsements has largely considered consumer involvement as unitary, i.e. either high or low. However, the multifaceted aspect of consumer involvement is well established in the field of consumer psychology. The present research, therefore, is a pioneering attempt as it studies the effectiveness of match-up for two distinct high involvement situations. Moreover, unlike the majority of previous studies that have focused on the performance of “celebrity match” versus “celebrity mismatch”, the impact of match-up was studied in comparison to a non-celebrity attractive endorser.