BUS News
The HKBU School of Business is proud to announce that Prof. Shirley ZOU, Associate Professor in the Department of Accountancy, Economics and Finance, has been awarded the prestigious “Rising Star Research Grant 2024–25” by Prof. LYU Aiping, Vice-President (Research and Development) of Hong Kong Baptist University.
This grant recognises outstanding early-career researchers whose work demonstrates exceptional promise and impact. Prof. ZOU’s awarded project, tentatively titled “Regulating Plastic Bags: Evidence from China's Supermarket Industry”, addresses one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the modern era—plastic pollution.
Her research explores the effectiveness of plastic bag regulation in shaping consumer behaviour, using a proprietary panel dataset that tracks plastic bag usage by 150,000 consumers across 333 cities in China. The study evaluates the impact of a national policy banning non-degradable plastic bags, which was implemented in selected cities in January 2021. These bags were replaced with biodegradable alternatives priced significantly higher, offering a unique opportunity to assess real-world behavioral responses.
Leveraging individual-level data from Alipay, a popular mobile payment app in China, Prof. ZOU and her co-authors study how people’s use of plastic bags changed after a new policy was introduced. This data includes information about users’ eco-friendly habits and spending patterns. By comparing cities that enforced the policy with those that did not, the researchers can see how effective the policy was. They also explore how the policy may have influenced other shopping behaviours and whether different groups of people responded in different ways.
This timely research promises to advance the understanding of environmental regulation effectiveness, offering data-driven insights to inform future sustainability initiatives and consumer engagement strategies for plastic waste reduction.