Green Information Technology Behavior of Young Generation
Ahmet Fatih Ozkul, Meltem Ozturan
Bogazici University, Turkey
Abstract: – As the role of information technology (IT) in the world has been tremendously increasing each day, its effects on the environment are becoming more crucial for our daily lives. Green IT has been investigated in the literature for almost 15 years since it was first mentioned. It focuses on IT’s role in the environment in regard to sustainable practices for both organizations and individuals. This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding on the precedent effects of green IT behavior of young generation.
In this study, a theoretical model is developed to understand the green IT behavior with several dependent variables. Moreover, a relevant questionnaire is developed for each variable and surveyed through university students in Turkey anonymously. Based on the data collected from 242 respondents, it is concluded that the higher environmentalist behavior and higher green IT awareness significantly lead to a higher statistical IT attitude among students. However, the general IT usage does not come out to have a similar relationship. Also no significant difference is found between the groups of mobile phone usage time and between the gender groups in IT attitude. On the other hand, green IT attitude is found to be positively, statistically and significantly associated with green IT behavior.
Keywords: Green IT Attitude, Green IT Behavior, Young Generation
I. Introduction
The adoption, penetration, and general usage of information technology (IT) have been increasing extremely over the last decade. At the same time, the problems of global climate change, carbon dioxide emissions, and environmental catastrophes have been becoming more crucial issues than ever. An early report indicates that the IT sector could be responsible for 20% of the global energy consumption by the end of 2025 as well as affecting 14% of global carbon emissions by 2040 (Vidal, 2017). To cope with these existential problems, IT’s role has been investigated over the last 20 years.
In one of the related studies it was stated that green IT was firstly mentioned back in 2007 in a non-academic business report (Sedera et al., 2017). Green IT generally points out the financial as well as environmental implications of human efforts, with a focus on forms of decrease in energy waste, measures in cost-cutting, reduction in carbon emission, dealing with poor e-waste management, and contamination of environmental effects of hazardous IT devices (Linehan & Fisher, 2018; Przychodzen, Gómez Bezares, & Przychodzen, 2018).
In this manner, research questions for this study are stated as follows:
What are the factors affecting the green IT behavior of individuals?
What factors influence the overall green IT attitude?
What is the general level of awareness of green IT?
Not only were there fewer green IT studies focused on individuals’ green IT behavior but also green IT practices within universities have been less investigated in emerging countries (Hernandez, 2019). Hence, university students in Turkey were chosen as the appropriate population for this study.
In this study a survey is conducted to analyze the current factors that affect the green IT behavior of university students. It is hypothesized that high levels of green IT awareness, of general IT usage, of environmentalist behavior lead to a high level of green IT attitude which then eventually lead to a high level of green IT behavior among university students.
II. Literature Review
In this section, green IT studies that were mainly conducted in universities, are discussed.