The Roles of Knowledge, Threat, and PCE on Green Purchase Behaviour

Abstract

With an increasing pressure of environmental deterioration, many firms have started to be socially responsible by developing green products to meet the demand of environmentally conscious consumers. These firms are interested in finding the determinants of green purchase behaviour in order to develop effective communication messages and derive green purchase commitments. The effects of environmental knowledge, environmental threat and perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) in motivating one's behavioural change to engage in pro-environmental behaviour have been tested in the past, but they have not been tested together in the context of green purchase behaviour in Malaysia. Therefore, this paper reviews the conceptual and empirical literatures of the aforementioned variables in explaining the environmental attitude and behaviour, and proposes a conceptual model to be considered for future green purchase behavioural studies. The finding is expected to provide guidance for firms to profile the green buyers and position its green product more effectively.

Toward sustainable consumption: Investigating the determinants of green buying behaviour of Indian consumers

“…However, they mostly reported that there was a least significant relationship between environmental attitude and green buying behaviour by using the model of TPB in their cultural settings (Tan, 2011;Vermeir & Verbeke, 2008). Therefore, the issue of "value-action gap" is still uncovered in the literature of green consumer behaviour.…”

“…So there is need to employ some other attitudinal components in order to describe the phenomenon of green buying behaviour: these components may be environmental concern, environmental knowledge, consumer effectiveness, and green product attitude in the present era of green consumption (Chan, 2001;Kim & Choi, 2005;Lee, 2008;Mostafa, 2007b;Roberts, 1996;Tan, 2011;Uddin & Khan, 2016).…”

Green competence framework: evidence from China

“…While EK raises individual concerns and awareness, it does not necessarily result in behavioral changes (Zsóka, 20103;Tan, 2011a). Attitude however, defined as "an enduring set of beliefs about an object that predisposes people to behave in particular ways toward the object" (Weigel, 1983), results in behavioral changes.…”

“…In fact, EK and pro-environmental attitudes are highly interrelated (Zsóka, 20103). The literature suggests, however, that a general attitude is relatively poor in predicting a specific behavior when compared with a specific attitude with a strong predictor of an appropriate kind of behavior (Tan, 2011a;Tan and Lau, 2011;Sun and Wilson, 2008;Mainieri et al 1997). In an environmental context, an attitude towards green behavior (a specific attitude), refers to people's feeling and beliefs on adopting this specific environmentally-friendly behavior (Tan, 2011a).…”

“…EK consists of abstract knowledge (AK) (knowledge about the environmental issues, such as environmental problems, causes, solutions and so on) and concrete knowledge (CK) (knowledge that can be utilized or acted upon, such as factual knowledge) (Schahn and Holzer, 1990;Mostafa, 2007). It is generally believed that AK is more likely to influence green behavior (Tan, 2011a;Tanner and Kast, 2003).…”