Diagnose barriers to sustainable development: A study on “desensitization” in urban residents' green purchasing behavior

Abstract

It is of great significance to remove barriers to green purchasing to improve the environmental governance efficiency of the green market. For this purpose, this paper takes the validity of the environmental “fear appeals” as the starting point and explores the formation mechanism of the “desensitization” to green consumption. Based on structural equation modeling and multiple regression model, we carried out an empirical study on a sample of 479 urban adult residents. The results show that media persuasion exerted a positive impact on green purchasing behavior through the perceived seriousness of environmental problems. The perceived seriousness of environmental problems positively impacted green purchasing behavior and played a partial mediated effect between media persuasion and green purchasing behavior. Meanwhile, the mediated effect of the perceived seriousness of environmental problems was negatively moderated by both perceived effectiveness of environmental behavior and switching costs. Moreover, the analysis of urban adults' “desensitization” to green consumption indicates that the formation mechanism of adults' “desensitization” was different from that of the minors. Our conclusions bear certain theoretical and practical significance for the media to correctly use green persuasion strategies and rectify bias in green attitudes and behaviors, as well as for enterprises to conduct green marketing, etc.

Promoting sustainable development: A research on residents' green purchasing behavior from a perspective of the goal‐framing theory

“…GPB scale consists of four items taken from Jaiswal and Kant (2018). PSEP (five items) was adopted from Yang and Zhang (2020).…”

“…) findings that high PSEP may strengthen the effect of MP on individual's anxiety and tension (neuroticism)(Moon et al, 2019;Yang & Zhang, 2020), promoting residents' reappraisal on what is gained and what is lost. This finding indicates that with practical value of green products increasing, residents also engage in more GPBs accordingly…”

“…Hovland et al (1953) and Rogers and Mewborn (1976) believed that low fear appeal was more persuasive than high fear appeal resulting from "reversion effect" (i.e., the audience's approval attitude returned to the previous indifference when facing high fear). In contrast, recent studies have found that "fear appeal" positively relates to residents' GPB (Moon, Mohel, & Farooq, 2019;Suki & Suki, 2019;Yang & Zhang, 2020). To investigate the effectiveness of "fear appeal" strategy in the context of green consumption, this study included perceived seriousness of environmental problems (a measure of fear appeal) (PSEP) as a potential moderator to explore its other possible formation mechanisms of "reversion effect" on GPB.…”

Urban and Rural Sustainability: Divergent Concepts and Their Consequences for Marketing

“…Consolidating substantial progress in the change toward sustainable lifestyles calls for a differentiated understanding of sustainability at the conceptual level. Reducing "sustainability" to urban living consumers' conceptualization (e.g., Yang and Zhang, 2020) leaves a significant portion of the population behind, denies and hinders the dynamics of innovation in rural areas of affluent and developed regions of the world, and might even induce innovation resistance. Therefore, this study alerts scientists and practitioners to take into account the conceptual differences and the divergent dynamics of innovation adoption in the development of products and services.…”

“…Considering these factors, we assume that both the conceptualization and the motives for sustainable behavior differ between urban and rural areas. Notably, these differences have not been considered in theory building but have been reduced to a frame of reference for properly illustrating the empirical results in relevant studies (e.g., Wang et al, 2014;Illgen and Höck, 2020;Yang and Zhang, 2020).…”