DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2018.373
title: Factors influencing Thai consumers’ behavior on reducing single-use plastic cups

description: This project is a contemporary topic in applied marketing that focuses on a societal issue that is important to Thailand. These days, Thailand has been facing a serious problem regarding plastic waste pollution due to weak law enforcement, a lack of effective waste management, and limited contribution from organizations at all levels and Thai consumers. The number of plastic products is increasing every year, especially those made of single-use plastic that create great burden to the environment.From the review of relevant literature, there is still the limited number of studies on the underlying factor that drive green behavior among Thai consumers. Therefore, this study aims to explore the current consumer adoption of the plastic cup reduction behavior and the key influential factors that can drive Thai people to reduce plastic waste generation by focusing on plastic cups that present a great portion of single-use plastic waste. Furthermore, the research aims to segment Thai consumers into groups by using psychographics, demographics and behavioral factors to make a set of appropriate recommendations for policy makers and marketers to drive each group of consumers towards sustainable behavior. This research was carried out with both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The chosen non-probability sampling method were convenient sampling and snowball sampling techniques. For the qualitative part, three methods were used, including desk research, 10 in-depth interviews, and 80 observations at selected tea-and-coffee stores in Bangkok. To complement the qualitative data, quantitative research was conducted with 236 completed online questionnaires. The respondents include both users and non-users of reusable personal cups in tea-and-coffee stores in Bangkok.The research found that more than half of the respondents have brought their personal cups to purchase beverages at the stores, and 48% of them also showed continuous participation. On the other hand, about half of the respondents never adopted the use of personal cups.The consumers were classified into four groups according to their psychographics – nonconformist, self-centric, price sensitive environmentalist, and big spender. There are few differences in terms of their demographic and tea-and-coffee consumption behavior between these four groups. In contrast, there is a significant difference in terms of their intention to reduce single-use plastic and to adopt the use of personal cups. This research finding suggested that Thai consumers considered the discount benefit as a more effective solution than the penalty on plastic consumption as opposed to other international studies around the world. It also suggested that only raising environmental concern is insufficient to convert non-personal cup users to personal cup users, but the combination of environmental concern and monetary incentives need to be applied.Marketers and policy makers should focus on price sensitive environmentalist and big spender segments by increasing awareness on environmental impact from plastic usage, providing information about discount campaign on personal cups, and reducing cost of trade-off between convenience and environmental sustainability. Moreover, it is recommended for marketers to develop a variety of conveniently portable cup designs or pioneer a rental cup service in response to Thai people’s need of convenience and diverse lifestyles.