Perceptions of Students on Environmental Impacts of Online Shopping: A Preliminary Study at a Public Malaysian University

Abstract

The environmental impacts of online shopping are multifaceted as many factors are contributing to the impacts. This study was conducted to determine a public university undergraduate students' perceptions of the environmental impacts of online shopping and their intentions to reduce the impacts by using a questionnaire survey. One hundred twenty-six respondents were engaged through convenient sampling in this study. Results found that the majority of respondents perceived online shopping as environmentally friendly. They perceived that it does not contribute to climate change and will not be a major environmental risk in the future. Type of packaging (77.8%), transport mode of freight (71.5%) and amount of packaging (69.9%) were the top three factors perceived to contribute to environmental impacts. However, a small number of the respondents perceived ICT equipment (32.5%), express delivery (28.5%) and time spent in searching online products (24.6%) were the factors that contribute to environmental impacts. The majority of respondents (74.6%) perceived that packaging waste generation was the major environmental impact of online shopping. In contrast, carbon footprint, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission made up of 56.4%, 53.3% and 44.4% of the total respondents. Most of the respondents intended to plan first before making any purchase to prevent wastage, reuse the packaging material and maximise the number of items of each purchase to reduce the environmental impacts. This preliminary study can provide the necessary background information on the level of awareness of university undergraduate students on this issue for future environmental education programs on online shopping.