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Plastic pollution has now become a major concern worldwide as it gravely affects the environment, oceans, and the like of wild animals and birds. The lack of proper management is causing this problem. One of the most common plastic products that are being used in day-to-day life by people around the world is plastic bags. The plastic bag is convenient because it is easily available and cheap. In order to curb the use of plastic waste, many policies are targeting to reduce the use of plastic bags by imposing bans or levies on them. In some instances, voluntary actions are also been taken by the consumer and retailers to reduce the use of plastic bags. There have been many studies that have seen the effectiveness or behaviour of consumers and retailers due to the imposition of levy or ban on plastic bags, but very little literature is there on the collective action of consumers or retailers on plastic bags ban. As the plastic bag is a common pool resource in the market that is, it has low excludability and high subtractibility, and as proposed by Eleanor Ostrom common pool resource could be well managed by the community. Thus, this study will see the question as to why market associations are not taking collective action on the plastic bag ban. this study will apply IAD which is Institutional Analysis Development on the market association to see its institutional capacity of it to take collective action on plastic bags. Ranking and factor analysis will be done to rank the barriers faced by the retailer while adopting the plastic ban policy. In the result, it was found that due to the large group size of the association, no monitoring mechanism in the association, heterogeneity in the interest of the retailers, weak leadership and no proper information regarding the policy are causing the non-emergence of the collective action in the market association. The barriers, barriers related to economic factors, and factors related to consumers are causing hindrance among the retailers to adopting plastic bag policy.
Keywords: Plastic bags, Institutional Analysis Development, collective action, barriers.
