**5. Conclusions**

There was a gap observed between theory and practice in this study where households' level of knowledge, attitude and behaviour had no linear associations when tested with Pearson's Correlation Coefficient. Moderate knowledge with a positive attitude were insufficient to drive good behaviours different than that in theory. Therefore, the paper further examined the potential parameters that would shape households' behaviour and thus encourage behavioural change, considering the fact that about two-fifth of recyclers adopted source separation despite the current less-supported waste management mechanisms and environment. It was revealed that environmental protection was the most important enabling factor for households' participation in R&SS, while on the contrary, time consumption and accessibility to R&SS services were among the highest rated barriers by the non-recyclers or non-waste sorters.

There was also disconnection observed between households and the local authority where the former was unable to identify existing municipal R&SS initiatives, while the latter faced obstacles to find effective ways to engage with more diverse household groups regardless of cultural and social background. The local authority also pointed out the important roles played by the NGO in bridging the communication and trust gaps between the community and government.

This paper aimed at providing recommendations to the specific stakeholders in Manjung district to improve waste management through R&SS implementation by analysing the causations between KAB at a household level. By addressing the gap between households' awareness, more effective and targeted strategies and initiatives can be formulated to tackle the actual gap. Nonetheless, with the limited number of samplings as identified in the methodology section, further study is needed to capture more data, which can potentially be expandable to cover other districts in Perak state, or in other states in the country. In addition, as identified in this study, further study on the influence of both internal and external factors will provide in-depth understanding of the linkage between KAB in any study area.

**Author Contributions:** The paper is based on the undergraduate final year academic project of P.L.Y.; writing—original draft, H.C.G., P.L.Y.; writing—review and editing, P.L.Y., N.A.G., M.A. and H.C.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The paper was drafted by the corresponding author during her writing residency with the company of Abu Bijan at Rimbun Dahan.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
