Banning free plastic bags for groceries resulted in customers purchasing more plastic bags, study finds

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Nov 18, 2024
Banning free plastic bags for groceries resulted in customers purchasing more plastic bags, study finds

by David Danelski , University of California - Riverside

Regulations imposed to protect the environment may continue to have impacts even after they are repealed. And those lingering impacts include some that run contrary to the goals of the policies.

Such are the findings of a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research co-authored by UC Riverside marketing professor Hai Che that examined policies to curtail the use of single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and other retail outlets in Austin and Dallas, Texas—policies that were later repealed.

Significantly, the behaviors spurred by the plastic bag rules continued after the rules were no longer in place. And some impacts were not beneficial to the environment.

"We were hoping for positive spillover effects, like customers will be more environmentally conscious and consume less one-time use plastic or paper products," said Che, an associate professor at UCR's School of Business. "But that's not what happened in the data. People wound up buying more plastic."
Snip...more...(not all bad news)...
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-free-plastic-bags-groceries-resulted.html

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