China’s green future and household solid waste: Challenges and prospects

China is facing the dual challenge of economic development and environment protection. Recently, Shanghai (tier-1 city) implemented the pilot project of household solid waste (HSW) management and expects to execute a similar project in 45 cities across China by 2020. The current research’s aim is to examine the pilot project’s progress by comparing it with existing HSW management practice in other cities. From a theoretical perspective, a socio-ecological framework is used to examine citizens’ HSW sorting behavior (HSWSB), which is further mapped based on the theory of planned behavior to enrich the findings. A total of 1409 citizen responses are utilized to generalize the findings. The study concludes that replicating tier-1 practices in other cities could produce unsatisfactory results. The regulatory environment should focus on comparatively long-lasting citizen behavior change by designing a citizen-centric approach (i.e., awareness campaigns) related to ecological concerns (i.e., climate change) because it could define the future of HSWSB practice in Chinese society.