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Encouraging customers in Indonesia to use eco-friendly bags

Contact person: Lukas Kampenhuber and Björn Vollan

This research is part of a larger project carried out with the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology in Bremen. Altogether we have implemented three different natural field experiments on the adoption or environmentally friendly shopping bag. Read more about the first two experiments on Roger Spranz's blog 'cracklefree'.

Local grocery supply in Indonesia is mainly provided by small shops, so called warungs. Many of these shops only serve a very small amount of customers, including their local neighbors and people living nearby. Although an increasing number of franchising Mini-Markets and Super-Markets are taking over, to date traditional warungs and markets still account for more than half of Indonesian grocery shopping. It is very common that purchased items get packed into numerous plastic bags, and it remains an open secret that a high amount of plastic bag waste is not appropriately disposed or recycled. As a result, many of the freely distributed plastic bags end on the streets, fields and woods of Bali, waiting for the next rain to flush them into the rivers or the ocean.   To have a further understanding of how to challenge the dangers of plastic bag disposal, a team of 15 Indonesian students conducted a survey in 15 villages in Tabanan Regency in Bali. This region was chosen since most Indonesians also live in rural areas. The area stretches from the coast up to the mountains and represents a rural area of Western Bali away from the tourism dominated south of the Island. Each village was randomly chosen out of a pool of villages that had 10000 inhabitants or less. 

In each village, customers of the villages’ largest warung were asked to complete a survey after their purchase in the shop. Each customer who agreed to purchase a bag (the price was 2000 IDR) got a booklet that was part of a customer loyalty program where customers could collect up to five stickers within two and a half weeks. They were only awarded a sticker if they went shopping with the reusable bag that was given to them and they did not take any additional plastic bags with them. Therefore it was assured, that customers who got a sticker did not take any plastic bags with them after their purchase.

Depending on the treatment, customers were also rewarded with either an individual reward or a social reward (donation to a charity) if they managed to collect five stickers. Overall the experiment had five different treatment types.

Thanks to the diligence and hard work of the local students from Udayana University and the support of Professor Mimba it was possible to reach all previously defined targets within the defined time frame the experiment was planned. With that, the last phase of the experiment can begin – analyzing and interpreting the data collected.

External collaborators:

Manuela Oberauer
Roger Spranz
Achim Schlüter

Funded by: