TRSM Research Seminar by Dr. Ranjita Singh

Title: Recycling during a pandemic: Individual intentions versus group expectations

Description: With the advent of COVID-19 around the globe from 2020, have Gen Zs’ motivation to recycle changed? (Grimalda, Buchan, Ozturk, Pinate, Urso, Brewer, 2021). We conducted a survey by administering questionnaires to undergraduate students in a Canadian University. With the onset of COVID-19, more effort that has been spent on understanding the importance of public health and how each person affects another person’s well-being in a neighbourhood. Gen Zs have often been considered self-centered. However, during the pandemic this group has also been at the forefront of the fight especially in communities ravaged by COVID. Gen Zs who arguably constitute a significant group of customers that will affect the future of recycling will determine the success of this endeavour. Therefore, understanding the decision making of this group will help us in advancing research that specifically studies how the sustainability agenda of the country can be strengthened. We found that while public health directives about masking and stay at home rules were followed by this group, their recycling behavior was not affected as they believed it was important to do.

Bio: Dr. Ranjita Singh is an Assistant Professor with the Entrepreneurship & Strategy group at TRSM. Ranjita is the coordinator of the BSM program, comprising 3 courses BSM 100, BSM 200 and BSM 600. Dr. Ranjita joined TRSM from the Amsterdam Business School (ABS), University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on sustainability, corporate governance and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Ranjita’s recent work on corporate sustainability, studies the top 200 Canadian corporations and their sustainability reporting practices and asks the following questions;

Does Sustainability reporting differ based on their international presence?

Does a corporation’s public messaging match its sustainability reporting practices?