The relationship between consumption of single-use plastic bags, environmental awareness, and socio-demographic factors

This study aims to analyze plastic bag usage by households before and after plastic bag fees were implemented in Turkey in terms of socio-demographic factors, attitude toward the policy, and environmental awareness. Single-use plastic bags, which cannot be broken down in nature for long periods of time, are the type of plastic products with the most widespread and rapid consumption. Many countries and regions in the world have been trying to change consumers’ shopping culture habits through bans and taxes on plastic bags. In Turkey, the practice of offering plastic bags free of charge was banned as of 2019. In this study, gender, age, education level, marital status, employment status and income level were considered as socio-demographic factors. Using survey data from 789 people residing in Istanbul, a principal component analysis and a logistic regression analysis were employed in this study. Results indicated that environmental awareness and various socio-demographic factors such as gender, marital status, income level, employment status influenced the use of paid and free-of-charge plastic bag use. However, age and level of education from the socio-demographic factors were not correlated with plastic bag usage before and after the introduction of the fee.