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 Direct-to-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, ‘self-efficacy’ 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.