Understanding Green Purchasing Behavior Through Environmental Attitude: An Empirical Study on Innisfree Consumers

Abstract

Lately, consumers are increasingly aware of their purchase behaviors in modern times. They are cognizant of the fact that their consumption habits may have a detrimental effect on environmental sustainability. Marketers have made numerous efforts to develop environmentally friendly products for their customers. This, however, results in a boomerang effect, where customers develop a negative attitude towards the process and label it as greenwashing. Aimed to fill in the knowledge and research object gaps regarding this issue, specifically in Medan, this research assessed how environmental attitude toward green purchasing behavior is influenced by numerous antecedents, including interpersonal influence, altruism, and environmental knowledge. Structural Equation Modelling analysis is employed to assess the relationship between variables. This research indicates that altruism and environmental knowledge have a positive effect on environmental attitude, and that environmental attitude has a positive effect on green purchasing behavior. However, interpersonal influence has a negative effect on environmental attitudes. This shows that marketers should consider these variables when developing an effective campaign capable of eliciting a positive attitude about the environment among the population.

Factors That Impact Green Product Purchase Behaviour of Malaysian Shoppers

“…The study has revealed a significant relationship between environmental attitudes and consumers' green product purchase behaviour in Klang Valley. Therefore, this study is in line with the findings of previous scholars (Kilbourne & Beckmann, 1998;Kanapathipillai & Kumaran, 2022;Yogananda & Nair, 2019;Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021;Yadav & Pathak, 2016;Nam, Dong & Lee, 2017;Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021;(Wong, Jia & Wong, Hui & Wong, Winnie, 2020;Sharma et al, 2020;Alfonsius & Gilbert 2021;Taufique et al, 2017;Ricci et al, 2018). Their studies have also shown that environmental attitude and consumers' green product purchase behaviour where environmental attitudes can be measured by making cognitive judgments about environmental protection, individuals who have a positive attitude towards the environment influence their attitude to take action, consumer trust in green products purchasing, environmentally friendly products, and participating in environmental activities and based on our finding it corresponds to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) used in this study and shows that environmental attitudes lead to a higher intention to purchase green products.…”

“…The result showed that environmental attitudes significantly affect consumers' green product purchase behaviour in Klang Valley. The result of this research complements previous research findings of (Laroche et al, 2001;Chyong et al, 2006;Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021), which found that attitude is an important factor in predicting consumer's willingness to pay for more environmentally friendly or green products. These researchers revealed similar results where the weak determinants or low relationship between environmental attitudes and green purchases behaviour.…”

“…An individual's environmental Attitude serves as his cognitive shield against environmental degradation. This results from a person's mindset, which bases their Attitude toward environmental issues on the belief that they are the essential elements in the natural environment, leading to green purchasing (Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021).…”

“…According to (Nam, Dong & Lee, 2017), Attitude contributes to a sense of belief, which is vital in decisions like purchasing green products. (Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021) argued that attitudes are the most consistent explanatory factor in predicting consumers' willingness to pay for green products. It can be concluded that price is not the primary barrier to consumers purchasing green products if they are environmentally conscious and consumer willingness to pay more for eco-products according to (Yogananda & Nair, 2019), but their findings were inconclusive.…”

“…Furthermore, it is influenced by individual perceptions, resulting in an emotional predisposition to agree or disagree with specific environmental objects. Thus, ecological attitudes can be measured by making cognitive judgments about environmental protection, purchasing environmentally friendly products, and participating in environmental activities (Alfonsius & Gilbert, 2021). (Taufique et al, 2017) discovered that consumers' trust in green products leads to proenvironmental consumer behaviour.…”