<p>Household pharmaceutical waste (HPW) might pose growing threats to environmental sustainability and public health. This study examines the interacting effects of personal values and economic incentives on household pharmaceutical waste governance behaviors (HPWGB), drawing on an extended Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) model. We mainly investigate the household pharmaceutical waste governance behaviors from interdisciplinary integration of psychology and behavior sciences. We compare the different effects of egoistic value, altruistic value and biospheric value on awareness of consequences with respect to HPW. We also compare the different roles of personal norm on household pharmaceutical waste governance behaviors across private and public spheres. We explore the different moderating roles of economic incentives on the relationship between personal norm and household pharmaceutical waste governance behaviors. We conducted questionnaires survey among different provinces. After excluding invalid samples, we conduct structural equation modeling to empirically test the proposed hypotheses via 436 valid survey responses. Altruistic and biospheric values enhance awareness of consequences. Ascription of responsibility further reinforces personal norms, promoting both private- and public-sphere HPWGB. Economic incentives positively moderated the relationship between personal norms and public-sphere HPWGB. The study extends VBN with environmental nudge theory in the field of HPWGB. It also provides sustainable policy implications for improving waste household pharmaceutical governance mechanisms.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>