Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
41st International Business Information Management Association Conference (IBIMA), Granada, İspanya, 26 - 27 Haziran 2023, ss.976-987
This paper aims at providing a better understanding in terms of the propensity of university students and compare
males and females in regards to recycling their mobile phones. Despite many studies have discussed the student
habit for their purpose, very few have studied deeply the differences between genders in relation to recycling under
the light of both past and intended behavior. Among the many differences potentially relevant, namely incentives
and deterrents, knowledge and awareness are included. Therefore, it is obvious that a better understanding is
definitely needed. This study used a cross-sectional design to portrait the actual situation with a questionnaire
distributed widely across university administrators in Turkey who relayed it to their students. A total of 772 answers
were received from 74 universities. The questionnaire was built around the past behavior and its reasons, the
intention to recycle and its motives. After eliminating improper respondents from the sample, several analyses were
conducted with SPSS, namely intensive descriptive statistics and a series of t-tests and Xi2 between gender on most
of the questions. As can be expected, the data analysis has showed differences in the reasons invoked to change
their devices and less expectation of a financial counterpart to decide on a disposal mode. Female students are less
inclined to keep their old phones as a memento; instead, they plan more for a safe disposal or a potential reuse,
which shows a possible reason why they attribute less value than males to their old devices. Surprisingly, female
students have less knowledge about e-waste than male students but they are far more concerned about environment.