The Pro-environmental Behaviour and the Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia on Green IT Practices

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption to human life throughout the world in 2020. This virus has recorded above 21 Million infected cases and 750,000 deaths by early August 2020 [7]. As there is no cure and vaccine available yet, this unprecedented infectious virus is still claiming its toll on daily basis. The year 2020 will be remembered throughout the world for the pandemic and is the same in Malaysia too. Malaysia observed stringent movement control orders (MCO) by locking down the economy from March 18th, 2020. This has greatly reduced the carbon emissions by commercial/ educational entities throughout the country. At the same time, since people were required to stay home and the use of communication and work channels through digital platforms escalated, it has caused the surge in the residential network and energy demand to the peak. The online meetings and the Directto-Home (DTH) connections caused enormous load on the network infrastructure and the related energy surge. This study is an attempt to study the effects of pro-environmental behaviour and the Green IT practices during the lockdown period through applying the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). Our research indicated that the constructs of PMT has the significant capability to define the pro-environmental behaviour in the individuals. The PMT constructs, 'selfefficacy' and 'response-efficacy', along with the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards of intentions can derive pro-environmental behaviour in the given circumstances related to this study.

En Prensa Influencia Del Comportamiento Pro Ambiental De Profesores Sobre Estudiantes Universitarios en Cuarentena en Prensa

“…As reported by several authors (Sachdeva, et al, 2021;Daryanto, et al, 2022;Alla, et al, 2020) (Martínez-Soto, 2017;Sandoval-Escobar, et al, 2019). Therefore, the findings found highlight the role of universities as those that together with society play an important role in the prevention, promotion, and solution of environmental problems in crisis periods.…”

“…Como lo demuestran diversas investigaciones (Sachdeva, et al, 2021;Daryanto, et al, 2022;Alla, et al, 2020), la pandemia por COVID-19 ha expuesto una serie de efectos colaterales que requieren de intervenciones inmediatas que involucren cambios activos en los estilos de vida y actitudes a favor de la conservación del ambiente como medio para promover la resiliencia de las ciudades ante diversas crisis de salud tanto pública como ecológica (Ramkissoon, 2020). Con la presente investigación se reafirma que las investigaciones sobre ambiente y comportamiento humano ofrecen un potencial teórico, empírico y metodológico útil para promover evaluaciones e intervenciones de bajo costo y con impacto a favor de la promoción de una cultura de la sustentabilidad (Martínez-Soto, 2017).…”