Environmental Consciousness, Purchase Intention, and Actual Purchase Behavior of Eco-Friendly Products: The Moderating Impact of Situational Context

Nayeon Kim and Kyungtag Lee ()
Additional contact information
Nayeon Kim: School of Management, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea
Kyungtag Lee: School of Management, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: Recently, environmental issues have become major social concerns, and consumers are becoming increasingly aware of environmental matters; however, they remain hesitant to purchase eco-friendly products. This study examined consumers’ environmental consciousness as a factor influencing the purchase of eco-friendly products, and investigated situational factors that induce hesitancy in purchasing eco-friendly products. We studied the moderating effects of these factors with regard to ease of purchase and eco label credibility. Our research model is validated using data from 220 consumers with experience in purchasing eco-friendly products in Korea. For the data analysis, we used SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 22.0 to perform confirmatory factor analysis and SEM. The specific verification results are as follows. First, environmental interest did not significantly impact the purchase intention of eco-friendly products. Second, consumers’ environmental knowledge and consumer effectiveness perception both had a significant impact on the purchase intention of eco-friendly products. Third, the intention to purchase eco-friendly products significantly impacted the purchase behavior of eco-friendly products. In addition, the results of this study show that ease of purchase and eco label credibility have moderating effects on the relationship between purchase intention and purchase behavior. This study results contribute to the eco-friendly consumption literature by explaining the intention–behavior gap. This study also show that eco-friendly consumption can be stimulated through raising eco label credibility and ease of purchase. The findings have theoretical implications for understanding the factors that affect consumers’ intentions of and behavior toward eco product purchases, and practical implications for how to stimulate environmental consumer behavior.

Keywords: green product; environmental consciousness; purchase intention; actual purchase behavior; situational context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5312/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5312/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:7:p:5312-:d:1110614

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().