Developing countries, including Malaysia, are faced with low quality of environment, especially in urban areas, with respect to the solid waste management sector (Khajuria et al., 2010; Shamshiry et al., 2011). As stated by Firdaus and Ahmad (2010), one of the factors contributing to the low environment quality is inadequate and unscientific municipal solid waste management practice. Application of the 3Rs should be done in developing countries to improve solid waste management (Desa et al., 2011; Badgie et al., 2012). Badgie (2010) and Shamshiry et al. (2011) stated that Malaysia is also facing challenges in handling the increasing trend of solid waste generation owing to economic growth and increase in population and residents’ attitudes, while Moh and Manaf (2014) add rapid urbanisation as a factor that contributes to solid waste management challenges. The Malaysian Government has launched various recycling programmes and campaigns and has provided solid waste facilities to improve the solid waste management sector, but the success rate is still low based on the increasing amount of waste generated from year to year (Solid Waste Corporation Management, 2015). This is because people are not practising waste recycling behaviour actively even though they have an understanding and awareness of the impact of improper waste management on the environment (Moh and Manaf, 2014; Omran et al., 2009). Therefore, in the 11th Malaysia Plan, the government focused on changing the nation’s behaviour in minimising waste through waste separation instead of providing extra landfill and dumping areas (Economic Planning Unit, 2016). Waste separation is one of the ways to reduce the amount of waste being dumped at the landfill and increase the recycling rate (Badgie, 2010; Poon et al., 2001). In this RMK11, the government focus is on fostering waste separation behaviour in the society through comprehensive activities and a willingness to invest more, as the waste issue is at critical stage. Subsequently, the government came up with the A2 strategy in RMK11, which emphasises changing Malaysian behaviour, especially in waste separation, and was launched on 1st September 2015. A programme known as “Separation of Solid Waste at Source” was launched on 1st September 2015, to implement the mandatory separation of waste at source in a few Malaysian states. In addition to government efforts, research has also been conducted to contribute to reducing the amount of waste generated in the country. For example, a study conducted by Begum et al. (2006) emphasised on benefit – cost analysis of the economic feasibility of construction waste minimisation, that by Desa et al. (2011) focused on solid waste management and other research that focused on food waste separation (Eisted and Christensen, 2011; Ghani et al., 2013; Knussen et al., 2004; Pakpour et al., 2014). Based on the literature, it is seen that little research has been conducted, whether in Malaysia or other countries, on solid waste separation compared to industrial waste separation, food waste separation and household waste separation. Therefore, the present study, in exploring the solid waste separation intention, will contribute to the existing solid waste separation literature.