Food waste is a major sustainable development problem in the world, and the promotion of ugly food may help address this issue. According to cue utilization theory and the VAB model, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of green packaging in ugly food with multiple internal and external cues. A conceptual model with eight hypotheses are proposed. Conclusion, contributions of study and research limitations are finally shown.
Food waste is a major sustainable development problem in the world, and the promotion of ugly food may help address this issue. According to cue utilization theory and the VAB model, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of green packaging in ugly food with multiple internal and external cues. A conceptual model with eight hypotheses are proposed. Conclusion, contributions of study and research limitations are finally shown.
Healthy and environmentally friendly food is a subject of increasing prominence all around the world, and especially so in developing countries such as India, where consumption of agricultural goods produced in a sustainable environment with a low reliance on pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and genetic manipulation is a real challenge. Consumer interest in green food items is increasing as safety and health concerns grow, and researchers are calling for further investigation of green food consumer behavior. Although a large number of research was done on environmental performance in industrialized countries, very little research has been conducted among Indian consumers. Furthermore, the gap between intention to consume green food products and actual behavior remains under-investigated. This gap can be investigated through the prism of theory of planned behavior (TPB). This theory has been widely used in green consumer studies: it seeks to explain how individuals make decisions and take actions based on their attitudes, beliefs, and perceived behavioral control. However, the TPB has not been extended to account for cultural values (i.e., Hofstede’s cultural framework), which can play an important role in shaping consumer attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, this research investigates the application of the extended TPB model in the context of green food products with a quantitative survey among Indian consumers (N=387). The results show that long-term (health) orientation and collectivism influence both green purchase intention and behavior. This effect is explained by subjective norms, perceived value, and environmental attitudes of the consumers.
Green product experience has become an important marketing strategy for corporations to tap potential green consumers. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this article explores the influence of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on consumers’ green purchasing intentions from the perspective of green product experience with consumers in China, Japan, and Korea as the research objects. Our findings suggest that green product experience of consumers in the three countries can directly affect consumers' green purchasing intentions. Green product experience has an indirect influence on consumers’ green purchasing intention through the mediating effect of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The multiple group comparison shows the external validity of TPB through an examination of green purchasing behavior in different cultural settings, which will help enterprises implement effective experience marketing strategies.
In many situations, consumers have to make a sacrifice (e.g., price premium, loss of personal comfort and efficiency) when choosing a green product over its traditional alternative. Utilizing attribution theory, we offer a set of research propositions as an attempt to explain how consumers may rationalize their perceived sacrifice in making green purchases. First, we posit that consumers’ internal attribution (i.e., individual behaviors cause environmental degradation) enhances their green purchase behavior. Second, internal attribution would generate senses of self-efficacy and guilt, which lead to motivations to accept the perceived sacrifice in purchasing green products. Third, when green purchase indicates a significant sacrifice, consumers tend to develop a coping strategy by switching attribution of responsibility to others, and thus the influence of internal attribution on green purchase will be weakened.
Fashion companies and brands’ marketing activities focus on resolving environmental problems; however, these companies’ efforts, there are some examples of so-called “greenwashing”. This paper aims to analyze different perceptions of brand authenticity, green marketing, and purchase intention toward the brand before and after exposure to case information about greenwashing. A total of 211 data were gathered and analyzed using SPSS 25.0. Respondents were asked to respond to same questionnaires related to green marketing and the brand authenticity before and after their exposure to greenwashing information. The study participants’ perceptions of green marketing from the brand were statistically significantly negatively changed after exposure compared to before exposure. Similar patterns in results were found in the context of consumers’ perception of brand authenticity (genuineness, originality, and consistency), and purchase intention. The originality of this study is in evaluating consumers’ perception of greenwashing focused on brand authenticity. The findings of the study suggest that if a fashion brand’s green marketing activity is perceived as greenwashing by consumers, the perceptions of green marketing, brand authenticity, and purchase intention can all decline. It is suggested that fashion brands need to develop a sincere and truthful green marketing campaigns to keep and enhance their brand authenticity.
Consumer ethics (CE) is defined by Muncy and Vitell (1992) as the moral standards to guide consumers’ behaviors in obtaining and disposing of goods and services. Regarding ethical issues, consumers have concerns on human, animal or environmental welfare (Gregory-Smith, Smith, & Winklhofer, 2013). As Liu, Yang, and Zeng (2015) describe, unethical consumer behavior (UCB) may cause underlying damage to society, reflecting the dysfunctional, dark or sinister side of consumer behavior. In consumer ethics literature, early studies focus on discussing the dark side of consumer behavior or unethical consumer behavior (UCB), such as returning goods you damaged, taping a movie off the television, shoplifting, etc. (Vitell & Muncy, 2003), counterfeit consumption (Tang, Tian, & Zaichkowsky, 2014; Wilcox, Kim, & Sen, 2009). In last few decades, more attention has been given to the study of the bright side, for instance, green purchase (e.g., Lee, 2008 & 2009; Chan, 2008); sustainable consumption (Lee, 2014), or fair trade (Chatzidakis, Kastanakis, & Stathopoulou, 2016). Within the studies on the bright side of consumer ethics, some of them investigate consumers’ attitude towards green purchase and its relationship with green purchase intention and behavior (e.g., Chai & Chen, 2009; Chen & Chai, 2010; Cherian & Jacob, 2012; Han, Hsu, & Lee, 2009; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006). Among these studies, the semantic-differential scale of attitudes towards green purchase (AGP) developed by Taylor and Todd (1995) is more commonly adopted (e.g., Chai & Chen, 2009; Chan, 2001, Chen & Chai, 2010; Mostafa, 2006 & 2007). This AGP scale contains three items, namely i) I dislike/like the idea of purchasing green products, ii) Purchasing green products is a bad/good idea, and iii) I have a/an unfavourable/favourable attitude towards purchasing a green version of a product. Some other studies on the bright side of consumer ethics investigate consumers’ intention to purchase different green products, such as organic skin/hair care product (Kim & Chung, 2011), organic food (Paul & Rana, 2012), the relationship between environmental concern and green products purchase (Kangun, Carlson, & Grove, 1991), ecologically packaged products purchase (Schwepker & Cornwell, 1991) or organic vegetables (Sparks & Shepherd, 1992). There are several green purchase intention (GPI) scales asking if respondents will buy product of green version, less polluting for ecology or environmental concern (Chan 2001; Chen & Chang, 2012; Taylor & Todd, 1995). Vitell and Muncy (2005) develop a consumer ethics scale with four categories of (un)ethical consumer behaviors, they are i) ethical consumer behaviors (i.e., recycling and doing good), ii) unethical consumer behaviors (i.e., actively benefiting from illegal activities [e.g., returning damaged goods when the damage was your own fault]; passively benefiting at the expense of others [e.g., lying about a child’s age to get a lower price], iii) questionable but generally legal practices [e.g., using a coupon for merchandise you did not buy], and iv) no harm/no foul activities [e.g., returning merchandise after buying it and not liking it]. In this scale, the ‘recycling’ and ‘doing good’ categories are similar to the Taylor and Todd’s (1995) AGP scale. It is quite surprising that there seems no research putting them together in studying green purchase intention. This conceptual paper attempts to fill this research gap. Conspicuous consumption, another type of consumption, also reveals some aspects of consumer ethics. It has been clearly defined that conspicuous consumption involves extravagant consumption (Veblen, 1899/1915), purchase of luxury goods (e.g., O’Cass & Frost, 2002; Shukla, 2008) or scarce products (Gierl & Huettl, 2010) to display wealth or to demonstrate personal taste (e.g., Blumer, 1969; Bourdieu, 1979/1984; Trigg, 2001). Extant literature illustrates that some terms are associated with conspicuous consumption behavior, such as ‘materialism’ (e.g., Podoshen, Li, & Zhang, 2011), ‘unnecessary expenses’ (e.g., Veblen (1899/1915), ‘conspicuous waste’ and ‘overconsumption’ (e.g., Carr, Gotlieb, Lee, and Shah, 2012; Chaudhuri, Mazumdar, & Ghoshal, 2011), ‘luxury consumption’ (Kwek & Lee, 2013), and ‘conspicuous taste’ (Bourdieu, 1979/1984). A relatively more complete scale of conspicuous consumption orientation developed by Chaudhuri et al. (2011) contains 12 items, which explicitly covers all items related to wealth, status and taste. With a closer look on the definition and the terms to describe conspicuous consumption, it is not hard to find out explicit remarks or implicit comments that various kinds of conspicuous consumption can be unethical, creating negative impacts in economical, socio-culturally and environmental contexts. First, conspicuous consumption can be a waste of economic resources. For instance, in conspicuous consumption feasting in Chinese communities, ordering more foods than enough would create wastes. Besides, conspicuous consumption is associated with impulse/impulsive buying (Zhang & Shrum, 2009). In modern economies with higher materialism, conspicuous consumption is highly related to expenditures of visible goods like high fashion clothing (O’Cass, 2001), jewelry, cars (Bloch, 1981; Charles, Hurst, & Roussanov, 2009), housing or mobile phones (Spero & Stone, 2004). Impulsive conspicuous consumption of new fashion in every season is another type of consumption creating more wastes. Second, conspicuous consumption can be harming to environment. For example, to demonstrate wealth or status, some people eat endangered species or killing wild animals, e.g., shark fin (Eriksson & Clarke, 2015), monkey or turtle. conspicuous consumption of clothing, ornaments or decorative items made of endangered species (e.g., ivory from elephant, skin from fox are also harming the nature. Given the ethical feature of conspicuous consumption is obvious, it is surprising that ethical issues of conspicuous consumption have yet been discussed prominently. Moreover, seldom of the studies in conspicuous consumption or CE discuss the bright side of conspicuous consumption. In fact, some types of consumption can be ethical and conspicuous. For instance, Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh (2010), when they study conspicuous conservation, they prove that status competition can help promote pro-environmental behavior. Alike, Sexton and Sexton (2014) reveal the green buying of energy saving vehicles. There are in fact more examples of ethical and conspicuous consumption, like consumption of eco-friendly clothing, accessories or dining, etc. In this regard, if there are more conspicuous and green consumptions, e.g., eco-friendly vehicles, decoration material, clothing or cuisines, conspicuous consumption can facilitate the development of a greener and harmonious societies on the contrary. Nowadays, amid the proliferation of environmental protection ideology, more consumers are willing to have green purchase. If the purchases are also ‘socially visible’, we may call them as ‘conspicuous green purchase’. Following this logic, if consumers have a higher tendency in consumer ethics and conspicuous consumption, they may have a higher green purchase intention (GPI). This proposition may be particularly valid for branded fashion, visible consumer electronics, or vehicles. In conspicuous GPI, consumers can show off their wealth, fashion taste and conservation virtue through displaying green products or green purchase publicly. Recently, a sustainable consumption report published by the Consumer Council in Hong Kong (Consumer Council, 2016) reveals that Hong Kong people has a high level of awareness and purchase intention of sustainable products, but they have a low level in action taking. In this regard, perhaps, the conspicuousness in the consumption of green products can be an additional motivation to enhance consumers' purchase intention. Surprisingly, there seems no research to explore to find out the mediating effect of conspicuous consumption on the relationship between AGP and GPI. This conceptual paper tries to fill this research gap. To sum, this conceptual paper aims to explore the relationship between these four constructs, attitudes towards green purchase (AGP), consumer ethics (CE), conspicuous consumption (CC) and conspicuous green purchase intention (CGPI). More specifically, this paper tries to examine the mediating effects of CE or CC on the relationship between AGP and CGPI. Considering the discussion above, the following propositions are generated. P1: A person with positive AGP tends to have a higher CGPI than a person with negative AGP. P2: A person with a higher CE orientation (recycling and doing good) and positive AGP tends to have a higher CGPI than a person with a lower CE orientation. P3: A person with a higher CC orientation and positive AGP tends to have a higher CGPI than a person with a lower CE orientation. This conceptual paper has both theoretical and practical implications. It helps integrate four constructs, namely attitudes towards green purchase, consumer ethics, conspicuous consumption and green purchase intention in one study, building better theories in these areas. This paper also helps marketers of green products to pay more attention to the market segment that consumers are both ethical and conspicuous consumption oriented, hence conveying more appropriate promotion messages and selecting right channels of distribution. Finally, more green purchase would help us to make better societies with higher moral standard in consumption.
Introduction
With awareness of the importance of environmental protection, encouragement of green consumption has been an important part of the Chinese government's efforts to promote sustainable development. Green consumption is similar to the concept of environmental responsible consumption, which refers to individual’s behavior with a consideration of the environmental impacts in the process of purchasing, using and disposing of various products, or use of various green services (Stern, 1999). Previous studies tried to predict pro-environmental behavior with social-psychological factors, such as values, attitudes and beliefs. However, researches about the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviors do not produce consistent results. Some prove that they are positive related, and others argue that their relationship is very weak. Studies have testified that lots of consumers declare that they concern about the environmental situation, but hesitate to pay for green products due to this affect (Chang, 2011). Advancing knowledge about the motivations and obstacles that shape intention and behavior of green consumption is important. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) is appropriate as an initial framework for studies investigating consumers’ pro-environmental behaviors. With the inclusion of a new construct perceived behavioral control, the explanatory ability of this model is strengthened. However, simple adoption of this model does not give us deep insight into consumers’ behavior. Later studies apply TPB in different contexts (e.g. Paul, Modi, Patel, 2016; Mancha & Yoder, 2015; Han, Hsu, Sheu, 2011). The mechanism of how attitude, norms and perception of behavioral control are formed may differ in different circumstances, which is still under research especially in China. The purpose of this paper is to (a) identify applicability of TPB model in predicting green purchasing intention and behavior in China and capture which factor including attitude, perceived behavioral control and norm is the most influential determinant; (b) to examine the most useful psychological and situational antecedents, which indirect influence consumers’ green purchase behavior through the factors in TPB framework.
Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
Green products refer to those produced with consideration of less harm to the ecological environment such as air, water and land. Green purchase behavior should be considered as a typical socially conscious behavior that is different from other types of consumer behaviors, which can deliver instant personal gain and gratification (Kim & Choi, 2005). Most of the time, pro-environmental purchasing is future-oriented and benefits society as a whole (Author, Mccarty, & Shrum, 2001). Previous research models seek to explain green purchase behavior from two aspects of causal factors. Some emphasize intra-personal determinants from within and others may stress that from outside. However, a single consideration of any one set of these factors will weaken the interpretation of consumers’ green consumer behavior. The research model of this study is based on the most influential TPB framework. Some significant psychological and situational factors are integrated into the framework with the purpose of further understanding Chinese consumers’ purchase behavior.
Theory of planned behavior
According to the TPB model, individual’s decision making is oriented by a rational evaluation of behavioral consequences (Bamberg & Moer, 2007). The intention to perform a behavior, is considered as the central factor in the TPB model (Tarkiainen & Sundqvist, 2005). Attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm about the behavior, and perceived behavioral control regarding the performance of the behavior are three principal factors that determine behavioral intention. H1: Intention to buy green product has a positive relationship with the green purchase behavior. Attitude refers to individuals' beliefs about the outcomes of the behavior together with an evaluation of the importance of these outcomes. Consumers who feel positive toward green products and have agreement on their environmental goodness will most likely to consider buying products with pro-ecological features. H2a: Attitude toward buying green product is positively associated with the intention to perform green purchase behavior. Subjective norm refers to the responses of important reference group (e.g. family members, close friends) to a particular behavior. Some scholars argue that “subjective norm” is the weakest component in the TPB model when predicting behavioral intentions due to its feature of both self and social interest (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Bagozzi et al., 2000). In this study, “moral norm” instead of “subjective norm” is proposed as a direct predictor of intention toward green purchasing. Moral norm indicates individual’s perception that whether performing a certain behavior is morally correct or not (Ajzen, 1991). H2b: Moral norm regarding buying green product is positively associated with the intention to perform green purchase behavior. Perceived behavioral control is an individual’s perception about if performing a particular behavior is easy or difficult. People tend to be more involved in behaviors that are considered to be easier to realize than what they think is difficult and have less control (Bamberg & Moer, 2007). H2c: PBC of buying green product is positively associated with the intention to perform green purchase behavior.
Psychological antecedents of attitude
Environmental concern indicates consumers' awareness about environmental issues and people’s worry that the human intervention will have threat to the environment (Kim & Choi, 2005). Literatures reveal an indirect relationship between ecological affect and actual behavior. Bang et al. (2000) concludes that environmental concern has indirect effect on purchase intention through the influence of consumer’s attitude toward paying a premium for renewable energy. The emotional responses to ecological problems help consumers to create a positive attitude toward green purchase behavior. H3a: Environmental concern is positively associated with the attitude toward green purchase behavior. Environmental knowledge represents consumers’ understanding of the environmental conditions, as well as fundamental factors that contribute to environmental change and crucial ecological effects (Pagiaslis & Krontalis, 2014). Knowledge has impact for individual’s cognitive processing. Zhao et al. (2014) confirms knowledge as one of the factors that form people’s attitudes toward environment-friendly behavior. Compared with less knowledgeable consumers, those who have more environmental knowledge incline to be more concerned about the environment, which in turn leads consumers to take attention to products’ ecological features while purchasing (Kim, Park, & Schwarz, 2010). H3b: Perceived environmental knowledge is positively associated with attitude toward green purchase behavior. In the pro-environmental behavior domain, PCE indicates to what extent consumers feel that every single person can contribute to solve environmental problems through their own efforts and their everyday purchase behavior (Straughan & Roberts, 1999).With the absence of belief that individual’s actions have observable outcome in making different solution to a problem, people will hesitate to take into action. Kim and Choi (2005) conclude that PCE has indirect effect on green purchasing through the role of ecological sensitive attitudes. H3c: PCE is positively associated with attitude toward green purchase behavior.
Moral norm and subjective norm
Bamberg and Moer (2007) suggest that people make use of subjective norms to determine whether a specific behavioral choice is easy to perform or whether it is beneficial. The opinions from “important others” deliver the standards for people to conform when they encounter the same situation. That is, the views about what is right or wrong from reference group will be absorbed and transformed as one’s personal moral norms (Bamberg & Moer, 2007). H4: Subjective norm is positively associated with moral norm regarding green purchase behavior.
Situational factors influencing PBC
Perceived availability indicates if consumers feel they can easily obtain or consume a certain product. If green products are not easy available, most consumers will not spend too much time and effort for searching. The limited availability and inconvenience in obtaining products is bound to hamper green products purchasing (Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006). H5a: Perceived availability of green product is positively associated with PBC regarding green purchase behavior. Perceived price is one of the most important factors that have impact on consumers’ decision-making of green consumption (Osterhus, 1997). Green products are generally priced higher than conventional products. However Chinese consumers who would like to pay a large premium are still in the minority. The perceived high price is a barrier that influences consumers’ perceived capability over green purchase behavior. H5b: Perceived price of green product is negatively associated with PBC regarding green purchase behavior. Information has an impact on individual’s cognitive process. It is an influential factor that leads consumer behavior change (Bator & Cialdini, 2000). Atkinson and Rosenthal confirm that eco-labels have effects on consumer’s trust and purchase intention. If consumers feel hard to recognize eco-labels and cannot understand their difference with regular ones, their perception of control will be highly influenced and the green purchase may be hindered. H5c: Perception of information provided by eco-label is positively associated with PBC regarding green purchase behavior.
Methodology
This research adopted the survey approach for data collection. A questionnaire that consisted of 46 items was designed according to relevant previous studies. All the items in the questionnaire use five-point Likert scale, which ranging from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5). The target group of this study was consumer who is over 18 years old in the urban areas of Mainland China. An online survey was conducted for collecting data in the mid-October, 2017 and 500 samples were collected totally. After removing the disqualified questionnaires, 485 questionnaires were identified as eligible for further analysis. To testify the proposed hypotheses, the simple and multiple linear regression analyses using IBM SPSS Statistics was primarily adopted in the study. Meanwhile, the structural equation modeling (SEM) was also conducted as an alternative approach to examine the arguments.
Results
Firstly, the theory of planned behavior suggested by Ajzen (1991) was proved to be applicable in the green purchasing circumstance. Attitude was identified to play the most significant role in predicting the intention. The construct “moral norm” was resulted to be more predictable for green purchase intention compared with the original “subjective norm”. It indicates that in certain contexts, personal feeling of moral obligation or responsibility is more crucial and direct reason for consumer conducting ethical behaviors. Perceived behavioral control was testified as the third prediction of purchase intention. The proportion of variance explained (R2=0.546) for intention was even better compared with previous studies, which claimed that the three determinants account for between 40% and 50% of the variance in intention (Ajzen, 1991; Amireault et al., 2008; Conner & Armitage, 1998). This model revealed consumers’ mental development of their purchase intention before enacting the buying behavior. Secondly, the results testify that PCE plays as the central role in predicting attitude. Respondents who believe that their consumptions can help to reduce environmental deterioration will be much likely to hold positive attitudes toward green purchasing. Environmental concern and perceived knowledge have a considerable, but only indirect impact on consumers’ attitude.
Implications for practice
The results of this study suggest that consumers’ intentions to buy green products are directly predicted by attitude, moral norm and their perceived behavioral control. Firstly, enterprises in the green market need to adopt effective communication strategy to inform consumers about the advantages of environmentally friendly products in order to help consumers to develop a positive attitude to pro-environmental products. Moreover, due to the significant effect of PCE on consumer attitude, it's necessary for the government to quantify the effect of green consumption by real cases and data, so that people can perceive the effectiveness of green buying behavior in a more intuitive way. Meanwhile, companies should take more emphasis on consumer’s ability to solve the problem in a positive manner in marketing communications. Secondly, personal moral norm is also found to have direct effects on purchase green products. Thus, normative appeal is needed for creating consumers' emotional connection and should be presented in the promotion programs to stimulate green consumption. Thirdly, this study reveals that the availability is the main factor that affects consumers’ perceived behavioral control over green purchasing.
The purpose of this research was to examine consumers from distinct cultural groups and examine similarities and differences in their green purchase behaviors. The sample consisted of consumers from U.S.A. and South Korea and the theory of planned behavior was used as a theoretical framework to test the influence of diverse constructs on consumers’ purchase intentions toward organic cotton apparel.
A total of 334 participants (164 for U.S.A. sample and 170 for South Korea sample) were recruited to examine purchase behaviors toward organic cotton apparel. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the relationship between the TPB constructs and compare the results between the two country groups. AMOS 24 and SPSS 24 were used to analyze the data.
For both countries, perceived behavioral control (PBC) and descriptive norms were strong predictors of purchase intentions and injunctive norms strongly influenced attitude formation. However, the two groups showed different results regarding attitude-purchase intention, descriptive norms-attitude, and injunctive norms-purchase intentions relationship. For example, while attitude was the strongest predictor of purchase intention in the U.S.A. group, it had an insignificant effect in South Korea group. For South Korea group PBC had the strongest effect on consumers purchase intention. Multi-group SEM results showed that the difference in the chi-square statistics between the two models was significant. Significant differences were found in two structural paths: attitude → purchase intention and PBC → purchase intention.
TPB provided a useful framework for explaining green purchase behaviors in both countries as PBC and descriptive norms strongly predicted consumers’ intention to purchase. However, South Koreans were more affected by the social pressure: their purchase intention were strongly influenced by both injunctive norms and descriptive norms which was in contrast to the findings from American consumers. Injunctive norms were an insignificant predictor of purchase intentions in the U.S.A. group. Injunctive norms reflect individual’s perception of whether the behavior is approved or disapproved by others while descriptive norms involve individual’s perception of whether the behavior is typically performed by others. Therefore, when Korean consumers perceive that others believe it is a good idea to purchase organic cotton apparel and when they actually see others purchasing the product, they will feel more inclined to purchase the product themselves. This result is consistent with previous research that suggest conformity is a crucial factor for people belonging to a collectivistic culture (e.g., Hofstede, 1980; Kitayama et al., 1995).
Consumers now-a-days are more inclined to buy green products (Mosgaard, 2015; Kammer, 2009). They are concerned about the negative environmental impact of the existing pattern of production and consumption systems on their quality of life (QoL) (Alfredsson, 2004). Consequently, large body of literature on factors influencing green consumption and/or purchase behaviour, among which ‘greenness’ of the product (Gershoffs & Frels, 2015), value of the green product (Olsen et al., 2014), attitude of the consumers towards environmental protection and available knowledge, and perceived time barriers (Tanner & Kast, 2003) are noteworthy among others. Although there is an abundance of research on green consumption, little is known about the habitual purchase of green products and how it contributes to the quality of life of the consumers. Habitual purchase refers to regular and automatic purchase of a product without any cognitive thought or evaluation (Verplanken & Melkevik, 2008). Thus it is distinct from conventionally used constructs such as purchase intention. This study addresses this research gap and aims to explore the effects of different types of green values (such as ecological, functional, economical, emotional and social value) and green satisfaction on the habitual purchase of green products and thus examine their effects on quality of life (QoL) of the consumers.
With the development of industry, environmental deterioration has become a global problem. Not only national policies on environmental issues should be strengthen but also environmental consciousness of corporate and consumers should be changed. In particular, corporate should strive to develop and improve green products for sustainable development.
Green advertising is one of an efficient marketing tools to sell the green product. The important role of green advertising is to awaken necessity of green product and to imprint green brand image consumer`s mind. Green advertising influencing consumer attitude plays a useful role of green purchase behavior.
This study explores dynamic relationships among personal uses of green advertising, attitude toward product, and purchase behavior for green products. The purpose of research is how personal uses of green advertising effects on attitude toward green products and green purchase behavior. Consumers are exposed to a large number of advertisings so that it is important to investigate how much they trust green advertising and what aspect of green advertising affects green purchase behavior. This study tries to contribute useful insights to practitioners who need a more effective communication strategy of green advertising.
The newly developed green fashion product, Eco-friendly Faux Leather Apparel (E-FLA) helps minimize harmful environmental impact with a low carbon footprint utilizing the progression of Bio-based Polyurethane and Nanocellulose technique. This study investigates green product purchase intentions along with the best available socio-psychological determinants and product criteria of the consumer green product adoption that can assist to launch E-FLA products in both western (England and the US) and eastern (China and South Korea) marketplaces. A total of 1,202 female respondents between the ages of 20 and 50 from England (N=297), the US (N=305), China (N=300), and Korea (N=300) completed the online survey. ANOVA indicated significant difference in consumers’ socio-psychological characteristics (consumption values, ethical consumption beliefs, self-satisfaction of ethical consumption, perceived consumer effectiveness, and environmental knowledge) and product criteria (product attributes of E-FLA) across four countries. Purchase intention and willingness to pay a premium for E-FLA products were shown differently across four countries. Multiple regression analysis results demonstrated differences in consumers’ socio-psychological and product criteria determinants for the purchase intention of E-FLA products across countries. Evidence suggests that differentiated marketing strategies for E-FLA products are required when targeting global consumers. Practical implications and theoretical suggestions to understand consumer sustainable consumption attitudes are proposed.
The study aims to assess factors affecting intention to purchase green products in Vietnam. The study employs samples from customers who have actually experienced green consumption in Vietnam. The samples were collected by convenient sampling methods. The survey obtained 206 responses with full information. The survey was conducted from October 2019 to January 2020. The measurement scale was a 5-point scale with 1- completely disagree and 5- strongly agree. This study employs factor analysis and structural equation modelling analysis. The results showed that the social and environment sustainability awareness have positive effects on altruism of customers who are interested in green consumption. Altruism also has the same direction on green purchase intention. Besides, the attitude toward buying green and health consciousness affects green purchase intention. At the same time, the altruism and attitude towards buying green products also influence positively on green purchase intention. Besides, the health consciousness positively affects attitude towards buying green products. The results show that the health consciousness has a negative impact on intention to purchase green products. The findings suggest that it is necessary to raise customers' health consciousness, customers' altruism from disseminating knowledge about environmental protection as well as society to enhance the green consumption in Vietnam.