Investigating key factors influencing consumer plastic bag use reduction in Nanjing, China: A comprehensive SEM-ANN analysis

The widespread use of plastic bags has had negative impacts on society, economy, environment, and health. Understanding consumers' awareness and behavioral intention (BI) to reduce the use of plastic bags is crucial. This study aims to expand the Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB)model and comprehensively analyze the public's attitude and intentions toward reducing the use of plastic bags. The study involved an in-depth analysis of data collected from 317 respondents, employed a Structural Equation Model (SEM) to establish linear re-lationships among the factors in the theoretical model, and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to assess the predictive accuracy of the significant factors identified by the SEM. The results indicated that convenience(C), perceived behavioral control (PBC), and policy promotion (PP) are key factors influencing consumers' willing-ness to reduce the use of plastic bags. By introducing new variables, this study has made a contribution to the research in the field of reducing plastic bag usage.