Explaining socially responsible consumer behavior: A meta‐analytic review of theory of planned behavior

Abstract

Explaining socially responsible consumer behavior: A meta-analytic review of theory of planned behavior Tae-Im Han, Leslie Stoel The Ohio State University, USA Keywords: meta-analysis, theory of planned behavior, socially responsible consumers Introduction Despite retailer and consumer interest in ethical consumerism, prior research provides limited knowledge about purchase behaviors of socially responsible consumers. The term, socially responsible consumer has been conceptualized rather broadly and its definition varies across studies. The discrepancy in the use of the term and mixed results in previous research accordingly provide narrow understanding on this topic. The purpose of the study is to systematically review previous studies of socially responsible consumer behavior (SRCB) that apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to examine the predictive validity of the model and to identify major determinants of consumers' ethical purchase behaviors. It is among the first to quantitatively aggregate and compare the results from SRCB studies involving a broad range of product types and ethical issues. Literature Review Theory of planned behavior (TPB): Behavioral intention is a function of the following three factors: attitude toward performing the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) (Ajzen, 1991). TPB has been widely applied by studies in the psychosocial domain (McEachern et al., 2007). In particular, the theory has contributed to the enhancement of the ability to predict a person's intention to perform socially responsible behavior in various settings. Socially Responsible Consumers: Roberts (1993) described a socially responsible consumer as "one who purchases products and services perceived to have a positive (or less negative) influence on the environment or who patronizes businesses that attempt to affect related positive social change" (p. 140). Methods Meta-analysis is conducted to address the following research questions: 1. Which TPB components have stronger relationship with behavioral intention? 2. Are there any moderators that influence the relationships between TPB components? Studies for inclusion were limited to those that contain information on consumers' purchase behavior toward products associated with 2 types of social issues (i.e., environmental protection and support for human rights) within the domain of apparel, food, and hotel/tourism industries. A total of 30 studies reporting results of 33 independent data sets met the selection criteria needed for the analysis. Results 1) The relative strength of relationship between TPB components: Purchase intention correlated most strongly with attitude ( = .53, p<.001). Subjective norms ( =.50, p<.001) also had a strong association with purchase intention and the strength of association was much stronger than that of the PBC-purchase intention relationship ( = .39, p<.001). The homogeneity statistics indicated a large variation in the correlations reported in the data sets which encouraged a search for potential ...

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“…According to this theory, decision-making is guided by rational choice and evaluation of its behavioural consequences. TBP presents a comprehensive framework for understanding the factors that affect individual decision-making processes and has been applied in a large number of research works (for a review, see Han and Stoel, 2017).…”

Socially responsible consumption in Russia: Testing the theory of planned behavior and the moderating role of trust

“…TPB is one of the popular theories currently applied in SRC research (Han & Stoel, 2017; Liobikienė & Bernatonienė, 2017; Prendergast & Tsang, 2019). Its basic premise is that a given behavior is influenced by one’s salient beliefs relevant to the behavior (Ajzen, 1991).…”

Perceived quality and self‐identity in scholarly publishing

“…In this article the view is taken that intentional behavior is a more suitable "behavioral indicator" than the frequency of past publishing behavior, since OA publishing is new compared to non-OA publishing. In addition, intention to behave is frequently used as a dependent variable in a variety of behavioral settings (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010), including self-identity (Han & Stoel, 2017), perceived quality (Das, 2014), and OA publishing (Dulle & Minishi-Majanja, 2011;Khalili & Singh, 2012;Park, 2007). Typically, several factors that comprise a person's attitudes, normative influences, and behavioral control are thought to influence intention.…”

“…This research will provide additional knowledge and recommendations to the growing body of research on scholarly OA publishing. Furthermore, research on the attitude-behavior relationship suggests that the desire to make an effort or perform a behavior can derive from various sources (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010;Sheeran, 2002), including perceptions of quality (for example, Das, 2014) and self-identity (for example, Han & Stoel, 2017).…”