A Comprehensive Evaluation of Gift Packaging
Authors: Liu Shuo-Fang , Hong Mingkai 
Published: June 2023

Due to the rapid development of the global economy, the production of domestic waste has increased rapidly, causing increased damage to the global environment. Among them, packaging waste accounts for the largest proportion of household waste, and product packaging can lead to an excess of emissions, resource waste and environmental pollution, which are key areas that have received increased attention by society. In particular, the phenomenon of over-packaging has been on the rise, with gift packaging being the "hardest hit area". The gift-giving behavior is a manifestation of people's communication style, and these types of gifts which carry such emotional communication have gradually become the material carrier of etiquette culture. The packaging can show the value of the gift and enhance the quality of the gift. In addition, the emotional and social values contained therein are more easily realized. Therefore, consumers tend to pay close attention to the packaging when choosing gifts and are willing to pay extra for excessive packaging. Compared to ordinary commodities, gifts have special product positioning and their packaging is an important component of their value, therefore businesses understand that there is extra profit in gift packaging and are willing to make unnecessary designs for gift packaging. Nowadays, the phenomenon of over-packing in gifts is getting more and more attention from all walks of life, the problem of over-packing has triggering factors in the whole life cycle. To crack the problem of over-packing in gifts, we need to start from the roles of these triggering factors, which come from the production side, the consumption side and the third party. These entities are the manufacturers of the gifts, the designers who design gift packaging, the gift-givers who buy the gifts, those who receive the gift and the organizations that evaluate the packaging impartially. However, in the existing research, the comprehensive evaluation of gift packaging is still unclear, and there is a lack of theoretical guidance on how to reduce the triggering factors of excessive gift packaging from different perspectives. Therefore, this study focuses on this phenomenon to investigate the views of various roles on overwrapping in the life cycle of gift packaging, using existing gift packaging as a reference, extracting elements of gift packaging through literature survey, using questionnaires to obtain the evaluation of various roles on packaging elements, quantifying the obtained results, constructing a set of comprehensive evaluation scale for evaluating gift packaging, and presenting the results in the form of radar diagrams. The results of this study can optimize the design and development of gift packaging at the production end, correctly guide the selection and use of gift packaging at the consumer end, and provide a common evaluation standard for third-party organizations to judge the excellence of gift packaging. This study will reduce the triggering factors of over-packaging in the whole life cycle of gift packaging, alleviate the environmental pressure brought by over-packaging, and create a more sustainable gift packaging concept.