Evaluation of the Effect of Plastic Bag Charging on Consumers’ Behaviors by a Questionnaire on University Staff

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the effect of plastic bag charging (PBC) practice, which was implemented in Turkey since the beginning of 2019, on consumers’ behaviors and the factors affecting the consumers’ behaviors on plastic bag (PB) consumption and their perceptions. For this purpose, a questionnaire with 363 participants was conducted for university staff including academics, administrative and support staff. The outputs were obtained by analyzing the participant-reported data through independent sample T test and one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) in the IBM SPSS Statistics 21.0 program. The findings revealed that the PBC caused statistically significant changes on consumers’ behaviors with respect to the socio-demographic variables. Based on the overall findings obtained, it was found that the PBC practice contributes to the goals and targets in reducing the consumption of PBs at a certain level. In addition to that, it was concluded that various policies that might be an alternative or a support for the ongoing implementation should be taken under consideration by policymakers to achieve a truly sustainable success from the implementation.