Chile plastic bag ban study uncovers consumer resistance to new environmental legislation

07 Apr 2021 --- Radical changes in packaging consumption and throwaway culture, such as bans on plastic bags, can be met with resistance from consumers accustomed to using them in their shopping routines. 

New research is recommending a series of tactics, including promoting awareness and ease of action to help shoppers adjust to the disruptions being caused by new environmental sustainability policies.

Researchers from the University of Queensland, University of Melbourne and Universidad Finis Terrae, investigated consumer resistance to such changes in Chile, where a national plastic ban bag was implemented in 2019. 

The study, titled “How Do I Carry All This Now?”: Understanding Consumer Resistance to Sustainability Interventions” is published in the Journal of Marketing. 

The study authors sought to find answers to what causes consumer resistance to sustainability interventions, such as bans on plastic bags, and how consumer resistance can be reduced to make such interventions more effective. 

They conducted interviews, observed consumers, and collected documents, news articles, and social media posts related to the Chilean ban, starting in 2013 (when an initial ban in coastal areas was implemented) until four months after a nationwide ban was enforced in 2019.

Chilean plastic bag ban 
In 2018, Chile began implementing a nationwide law forbidding the delivery of plastic bags. The legislation made Chile the first country in Latin America to ban them. 

Since the law was taken into effect, 5 billion bags have been avoided, according to the country’s environment minister, Carolina Schmidt.

Bans on plastic bags cut into fundamental parts of social life, say the researchers.The first stage stipulated a maximum of two plastic bags per purchase. After six months, big stores like supermarkets and retailers could no longer offer plastic bags at all. 

The last phase began in 2020, two years after the law had been published. This saw a total ban on bags in micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses.

Before this law, 3.4 billion bags were used every year in Chile – about 200 bags per person, according to US-based nonprofit Plastic Oceans. 

Even though the legislation represented progress, it wasn’t free of criticism. 

“Some people believed the implementation was too abrupt, causing some companies to close because they couldn’t adapt fast enough. Also, there were no alternative options proposed, leading to a ‘tsunami’ of alternative bags flooding the market; many of them were even worse for the environment than the banned plastic bags. An example of this are non-woven bags,” writes Plastic Oceans. 

Resistance to change 
The study authors defined social practices as “activities, materials and meanings similarly understood and shared by a group of people.” 

Eating, cooking, shopping, driving and reading are examples of this. From this perspective, a behavior such as using a plastic bag to carry groceries is simply a performance of the socially shared, habituated practice of shopping.

“We discovered that consumers refuse to accept or support a sustainability intervention because the individual behaviors being targeted – in this case using disposable plastic bags for shopping – are not separate from, but embedded in, social practices,” remarks co-author Gonzalez-Arcos.Legislation must address change on a social level and help consumers adapt.

An intervention such as banning plastic bags triggers social change because plastic bags are one of the materials that constitute a meaningful social practice, explains the study. 

Plastic bags are used in many shopping activities like bagging groceries and carrying them home, and the other meanings they represent, like convenience and speed. Interfering with this, therefore, has a knock-on effect on some important areas of everyday life. 

“Consumer resistance interferes with social practice change, which significantly undermines the effectiveness of the sustainability intervention. Our findings show policymakers and other agents involved in sustainability interventions changing social practices – not individual behaviors – should be their primary goal,” explains co-author Joubert.

Curtailing consumer resistance 
Plastic bag bans and other sustainability interventions often fail to acknowledge that individual actions are part of broader social practices and therefore target individual behavioral change rather than a change in social practice, notes the study. 

Consequently, consumers face three major challenges: 

• Battles about who is responsible for making practices more sustainable.
• Unsettling emotions brought about by the changing practice.
• Changes to other linked practices that dismantle their ways of life. 

Understanding why consumers are resistant to change is essential for the success of new policies.Once these reasons for consumer resistance are accepted, it will provide greater clarity around why consumers will push back against sustainability interventions, assert the study authors.

To change the social practice of shopping after a plastic bag ban, the study suggests consumers should navigate three processes: 

• Sensemaking – understanding and developing new meanings for the changing shopping practice.
• Accommodating – developing new competencies for using and handling the new materials used to shop.
• Stabilizing – performing the changed practice often and efficiently.

Moving into the future 
With new and impending legislation on plastics being implemented, such as the UK Plastics Tax, the EU Plastics Tax and US Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, the study recommends a series of measures to ensure consumer compliance:

• Identify the practice being targeted and how it is likely to be disrupted (e.g. plastic bags banned).
• Distribute responsibility for change among those involved in the practice (e.g. consumers, retailers, bag manufacturers, government).
• Determine potential emotions that may manifest.
• Identify links between the targeted practice and other social practices. 
• Monitor and adjust practice-based interventions if consumer resistance emerges.
• Refocus sense making if consumers are experiencing tension and lacking focus.
• Encourage accommodation if consumers are avoiding risks and restricting their experimentation during the change process.
• Accelerate stabilization if consumers are grappling with discomfort and do not seem to be able to settle with a new version of the social practice.

Edited

By Louis Gore-Langton