Prioritizing factors determining environmental responsibility using fuzzy analytical hierarchy process: evidence from India

Abstract

PurposeFrom the last few decades, environmental issues have become a global concern. Consumption activities are given much attention in the marketing literature, whenever the question about protecting the environment arises. The responsibility of the consumer toward the environment is a major concern and the purpose of this study is to prioritize factors responsible for determining environmental responsibility among young consumers. This research will provide valuable insights to the marketers in targeting those particular areas which according to young consumers are highly ranked/prioritized for being environmentally responsible.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, data were collected from 400 young consumers from Punjab and Chandigarh. Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP) was applied to prioritize or rank the factors on the basis of significance for being environmentally responsible. The primary factors considered for further analysis were knowledge and awareness, attitude, green consumer value, emotional affinity toward nature, willingness to act and environment-related past behavior.FindingsResults of the study depicted knowledge and awareness as the highest-ranked and prioritized factor for young consumers to become environmentally responsible, while environment-related past behavior emerged as the least important factor for consumers' environmental responsibility.Research limitations/implicationsData were collected from the young consumers of Punjab and Chandigarh only and only a few factors of consumers' environmental responsibility were considered for further analysis which depicts the limitation of the study.Practical implicationsThe research study is highly useful for the government and the business firms to target the highly prioritized factors of environmental responsibility which will promote green consumption practices and behavior among young consumers.Originality/valuePrevious researches have explored the factors of environmental responsibility and modeled their relationships. However, the present study has employed the multi-criteria decision-making technique to provide valuable insights for marketers, academicians and practitioners about the drivers of consumers' environmental responsibility which adds value to the existing knowledge base.

Influence of contextual factors on investment decision-making: a fuzzy-AHP approach

“…Sachdeva et al (2021) in their research applies the fuzzy-AHP technique to determine and assign priorities to the motivators of herding behaviour among individual investors. Fuzzy-AHP is also applied in the factors in determining environment responsibility (Garg et al , 2021). In this study, Buckley’s (1985) approach is used to determine relative importance weights.…”

“…The following fuzzy-AHP steps have been used for calculating weights to evaluate the model are given below (Zaim et al , 2012; Garg et al , 2021; Jakhar and Srivastava, 2018): Step 1: Setting up a framework for the evaluation of contextual factors. Step 2: Creating a fuzzy-AHP questionnaire for evaluating contextual factors on investment decision-making: the criteria and sub-criteria are compared using triangular fuzzy numbers (Table 1) by the judgement maker. Step 3: Creating a normal and fuzzy pairwise reciprocal matrix. …”

“…The following fuzzy-AHP steps have been used for calculating weights to evaluate the model are given below (Zaim et al, 2012;Garg et al, 2021;Jakhar and Srivastava, 2018):…”

Why do young people do things for the environment? The effect of perceived values on pro-environmental behaviour

“…In addition, each value is independent and makes a unique contribution to each given choice (van Boerdonk et al , 2021). The concept has been empirically tested in different contexts, such as social media brand pages (Kim et al , 2011; Shi et al , 2016), tourism (Cheung et al , 2021; Sharma and Nayak, 2019) and environmental consumption (Bu et al , 2020; Yu et al , 2021; Garg et al , 2021). Thus, the present study uses CVT to explore the role of young people’s perceived values in establishing their pro-environmental attitudes and intentions.…”

What make investors herd while investing in the Indian stock market? A hybrid approach

“…Secondly, the current study employed the Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP), a multi-criteria decision-making technique to rank herding behavior's motivators among the Indian stock investors. The approach is the best-suited technique in assigning priorities (Liu et al , 2020) which has already been applied in several scenarios like priorities of behavioral bias influencing investment decisions (Jain et al , 2020) and priority of drivers of environmental responsibility (Garg et al , 2021).…”