Green brand awareness, green brand association, green perceived quality, and intention to purchase electric vehicles: The mediating effect of green trust

Abstract

As part of their effort to curb CO2 emissions, many big players in the automobile industry have adopted a green branding approach through the design and manufacturing of lightweight electric vehicles. Nevertheless, there are limited studies that address consumers’ intention to purchase these types of vehicles from the perspective of green branding. To fill this gap, this paper examines the direct and indirect effects of green brand awareness, green brand associations, and green perceived quality on consumer intention to purchase electric three-wheelers. A total of 400 useful responses were collected through a questionnaire survey and the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. The results show that all the direct effects were positive and statistically significant. Furthermore, the analysis shows that green trust plays a mediating role in the effects of brand associations and green perceived quality on consumers’ intention to purchase three-wheel electric vehicles from a familiar and trusted brand. Given the potential of electric three-wheelers in curbing CO2 emissions and stakeholders’ skepticism about companies' green branding claims, managers need to give special attention to green trust to better position their green products and stimulate the purchase of these products.