Towards closing the attitude-intention-behavior gap in green consumption: A narrative review of the literature and an overview of future research directions

Exploring Influential Factors Including COVID-19 on Green Food Purchase Intentions and the Intention–Behaviour Gap: A Qualitative Study among Consumers in a Chinese Context

“…When probing the IBG of consumers making purchasing decisions of green food products, high price, unavailability, mistrust issues, and limited knowledge were identified as major factors contributing to this gap. This is consistent with the study of an attitude–intention–behaviour gap in green consumption from ElHaffar et al [ 36 ]. Hence, these factors show a similarly important impact of the green gap despite the diversity of green products or green behaviours in different contexts.…”

“…However, according to Cohen [ 35 ], qualitative research with consumers can be more systematic, psychological, and innovative, which can reveal the “why” behind consumer behaviour and may explore underlying motives, values, and attitudes towards a particular product. Specifically, the latest research from ElHaffar et al [ 36 ] has highlighted the importance of qualitative studies and experimental designs in closing the IBG in green consumption. In addition, studying the influence of COVID-19 on consumers’ behaviour is still at a nascent stage.…”

How and Why Does the Attitude-Behavior Gap Differ Between Product Categories of Sustainable Food? Analysis of Organic Food Purchases Based on Household Panel Data

“…However, our data also revealed that approximately one in four consumers in our sample of more than eight thousand consumers held very positive attitudes toward organic food, but only a small proportion of consumers (4% of all households) directly translated these attitudes into purchase behavior. This study thus provides further evidence of the attitude-behavior gap (Yamoah and Acquaye, 2019 ; ElHaffar et al, 2020 ). The following discussion provides possible explanations for the attitude-behavior gap in the different product categories, based on our findings of how food-related values serve as drivers and barriers to organic food purchases (first research question), and how attitudes mediate the value-behavior relation (second research question).…”

“…The analyzed data covers consumers' actual purchase behavior and therefore offers a high degree of validity as compared to surveys and purchase experiments. However, a recent review study (ElHaffar et al, 2020 ) on the attitude-behavior-gap in the area of sustainable consumption put forward that more qualitative studies, studies based on experiments as well as consumer segmentation approaches are needed in order to find solutions to close the gap in the future. Moreover, barriers that prohibit the transformation of attitudes into behavior need to be analyzed more deeply in order to extend the market for sustainable products (Yamoah and Acquaye, 2019 ).…”

“…Studies that draw conclusions about the drivers of purchase behavior based solely on antecedents of purchase behavior without analyzing actual purchase behavior are potentially biased, moreover, as a result of the well-known attitude-behavior-gap (Aschemann-Witzel and Niebuhr Aagaard, 2014 ; Hidalgo-Baz et al, 2017 ) or intention-behavior-gap (Loy et al, 2016 ). A recent analysis of ElHaffar et al ( 2020 ) reviewed studies on the attitude-intention-behavior gap and revealed how the gap could be reduced and how research could yield more reliable results. One of the most important sources of bias are socially desirable answers, which occur in the absence of any incentives to reveal true attitudes or actual past behaviors (Auger and Devinney, 2007 ).…”