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PACKAGING

​CRISIS

Research Topic:Students' Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Online Delivery Packaging

Group 52: Kexin Zhang & Huiqi Liu &

Tiffany Nyan & Xingyi Miao & Eddie Lin

What are students’ attitudes and behaviors towards the recycling or discarding of online delivery packaging?
TAKING PLACE
July 14, 2020
 

UBC Vantage Online Capstone Conference

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An Introduction to Packaging-Polluted World

   When referring to the package crisis, one question you may draw out is that “What are students’ attitudes and behaviors towards the recycling or discarding of online delivery packaging?” and this is our research question. The speed and convenience brought by online retail attract consumers to shop online. However, few people have taken notice of the sustainable consumption issues caused by online retailing, especially by excessive delivery packaging. Sustainable consumption refers to the usage of products and services without harming the environment so then both present and future generations’ needs can be satisfied (Gillaspy, 2013). Packaging waste generated from online retailing has become an environmental concern (Chueamuangphan, Kashyap, & Visvanathan, 2019). A typical parcel may use up to seven types of packaging materials, including banknotes, envelopes, cardboard boxes, plastic bags, woven bags, tape, and cushioning materials (bubble packaging, Styrofoam). However, according to Chueamuangphan, Kashyap, and Viswanathan's research, only 11.8% among the online shoppers (86.2%) felt that the product arrived with “excessive” packaging, and they simply discard those packaging materials (2019). Additionally, the massive waste of non-degradable packaging is one common environmental misconduct among university students, which is extremely harmful to soil fertility and may produce poisonous substances (Davis & Song, 2006). Since college students are one of the main target customers in the online retail market, their attitudes or behaviors towards excessive packaging issues have a major impact on maintaining sustainable consumption. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate students' attitudes and behaviors regarding the recycling or discarding of online delivery packaging. 

MAILING LIST

RESEARCH METHOD

The participants would answer an online questionnaire made by our research group, and then the data would be collected through several days by our Co-investigators.

By summarizing and analyzing the data, we use a bar graph and pie charts to quantitatively analyze the recycling habits and challenges that Vantage students are facing when doing package recycling.

Design

As our research sample group came from the UBC Vantage students, the questionnaire URL link was posted through the Participants Recruitment Form in VANT 149 modules. To make sure that all participants would qualify the ethical requirements that they are over 18, we emphasized the age limit in the consent form. 81 first-year undergraduate participants from the UBC Vantage program filled out our questionnaires. Participants were asked to provide demographic information at the beginning of the survey. About 75% of participants were female and nearly 90% of participants were from East Asia.

The questionnaire consists of information form, consent form, survey questions, and a debrief form, and it has several question formats, such as multiple choices, ranking order formats to research the most or least popular concern when our participants are shopping. At the same time, short answer questions are prepared for participants’ personal statements and their questions regarding the issue or our survey. Excel was used to integrate our research data and investigate the descriptive statistics analysis.

Participants entered the survey through the link provided in the Participant Recruitment Form through Canvas. The entire survey cost 15 minutes to complete. Participants went through questions from asking their habits of purchasing online then recycling delivery packages to asking their thoughts regarding recycling and environmental issues. 

Procedure

Materials

Participants

SPEAKERS

 RESULTS: DATA ANALYSIS

The first pie chart shows that the majority (75%) of the participants use food delivery service 0 to 3 times a week and about thirty percent of them more than 3 times a week. In this case, a crisis situation exists that an enormous quantity of weekly packaging from online consumption is produced by students, and the severity can be explored through the average number (around 5) of packages that participants received per week.
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SPONSERS
Shockingly, the data shows that 88% of the participants tend not to think about the over-packing problems with the delivery ever. There may be several explanations for it. Similar to literature research data, participants are probably not aware of the over-packaging issues in daily life. Another possible explanation is that they think it is a reasonable amount of packaging, where there do not exist over-packaging problems because the relative amount of packages can protect items in the long-distance delivery process (referring to pie chart 2). 
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At the same time, while a large number of participants state their concern for the environment, it is ironic that of all 81 participants, 56 participants (about 70%) tend to purchase online without considering whether the package is environmentally friendly. In contrast, only one participant would first consider the package-environmentally friendly issue when purchasing.
Although most students haven’t realized the over-packaging issues, 96% of students hold supportive, motivated attitudes towards packaging recycling, while 4% of them will discard the packages directly. Among all the supporters, the majority of them will recycle it only when convenient situations such as there are sorted garbage bins nearby. (Referring to pie chart 3)
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When asking for reasons for not recycling, most participants provide answers like don’t know how or don’t have enough room, time, opportunities for recycling. 
When studying their recycling pattern in detail, as the bar chart demonstrated, most of the students often recycle or reuse plastic bags or paper boxes in their daily lives, conversely, when recycling cans or bottles for 5 cents/each, only a minority of participants take actions. This illustrates that most participants prefer to recycle the packages that are convenient to do because plastic bags and paper boxes can be easily handled and stored. Conversely, there are no specific recycling machines for people to return cans or bottles near their residences, and they do not want to lose their time to intentionally find a machine. There might be some other reasons to explain this phenomenon, such as classes that returning deposit bottles for 5 cents is mainly considered to be done by poor people.
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CONTACT

DISCUSSION

The study aimed to investigate students’ attitudes and behaviors towards the recycling or discarding of online delivery packaging. Referring to the survey results, most of the students tend to not recognize the online consumption over packaging issues. These consumers’ reactions to over packaging may connect to consumer ethical behaviors. Ethical consumer behavior is defined as “decision making, purchases, and other consumer experiences that are affected by the consumer’s ethical concerns” (Elgaaïed-Gambier, 2016). Similar to Elgaaïed-Gambier’s finding, most of the participants lack consumer ethics that they would not “take into account this environmental facet”(2016) when shopping online. Hence, they did not notice the over packaging issue that would harm the environment but only focus on the product they bought, although most of them hold a supportive attitude towards recycling. Recycling is of utmost importance to help protect our environment and later achieve sustainable consumption. “In 2005 the EPA reported that recycling in the United States reduced carbon emissions by enough to fill 10.5 million Olympic size swimming pools, which is a staggering number” (Greenpeace, 2011). Nevertheless, participants will only recycle when they are convenient, opposite to their positive attitudes towards packaging recycling. These participants’ hometown recycling conditions may lead to this result since around 90 percent of them are from East Asia. According to Zhang, Zhang, Yu, and Ren (2016), “The results indicate that enhanced accessibility of recycling facilities would lower behavioral costs and encourage people to take that action.” This reflects those recycling facilities in China are in shortage and ineffective such as physical structures and behavioral institutions, which results in keeping Chinese away from forming recycling habits. The type of waste that they recycle most also reveals the above situation that students often recycle or reuse plastic bags or paper boxes because it is more convenient than recycling cans or bottles for a 5 cents deposit. Although many of them care about protecting the environment, they may not realize or consider that their consumption habits are actually harming the environment. Moreover, most students usually have the basic awareness of recycling delivery packaging, but what they recycle depends on the product materials. They do not have complete knowledge of recycling in terms of the existed over-packing issue. Hence, they are not actually being protectors of nature to retain sustainability.

CONCLUSION

     Our research discovered a contradiction between cognition and behavior of participants in terms of consuming and recycling delivery packaging, where the majority believe they have a certain level of awareness of sustainable consumption, but few of them actually realize the serious problem of packaging waste. 

     In addition, what they commonly recycle is based on their convenience instead of their protection awareness. Acknowledging, understanding, and acting out to protect the environment are the three main takeaways, starting from recycling. Exposure to a summary of multiple ways of recycling delivery packages in daily lives leads to acknowledging. After letting you know, hopefully, we could get you to understand the significance or even be more aware of recycling and environmental protection. Action is the terminal goal, only by really acting out to protect the environment, can our earth become a better place. Therefore, we hope that our research discoveries could let everyone deliberate more regarding this recycle online delivery over packaging issues. Therefore changing our attitudes is the essential factor of behavior improvement

RECOMMENDATION

Blogger, G. (2015, July 04). Recycling benefits every facet of society. Retrieved July 06, 2020, from https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/recycling-benefits-every-facet-of-society/

 

Chueamuangphan, K., Kashyap, P., & Visvanathan, C. (2019). Packaging Waste from E-Commerce: Consumers’ Awareness and Concern. Sustainable Waste Management: 

Policies and Case Studies, 27-41. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-7071-7_3

 

Davis, G., & Song, J. (2006). Biodegradable packaging based on raw materials from crops and their impact on waste management. Industrial Crops and Products, 23(2), 

147-161. doi:10.1016/j.indcrop.2005.05.004

 

Elgaaïed-Gambier, L. (2016). Who buys over packaged grocery products and why? understanding consumers' reactions to over packaging in the food sector. Journal of 

Business Ethics, 135(4), 683-698. doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2491-2

 

Gillaspy, R. (2013, September 25) Sustainable Consumption: Definition and Complexities. https://study.com/academy/lesson/sustainable-consumption-definition-and-complexities.html.

 

Zhang, S., Zhang, M., Yu, X., & Ren, H. (2016). What keeps chinese from recycling: Accessibility of recycling facilities and the behavior. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 109, 176-186. doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.02.008

REFERENCE

  • Our participants provide some recommendations to reduce the harm brought by packaging waste, including changing packaging materials from disposable ones to recyclable or environmental ones, improving students’ recycling habits and shopping behaviors, limiting the packaging amount or increasing the packaging fees, etc..   

CONTACT US

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