Residents’ Green Purchasing Intentions in a Developing-Country Context: Integrating PLS-SEM and MGA Methods

Bin Wang, Jionghua Li, Ao Sun, Yongming Wang and Dianting Wu
Additional contact information
Bin Wang: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Jionghua Li: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Ao Sun: School of Geographical Science, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810008, China
Yongming Wang: College of Tourism, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China
Dianting Wu: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: This paper aims to examine the determinants of green purchasing intentions among different resident groups in a developing-country context. We first expand the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and build a theoretical model based on green purchasing intention, including attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, environmental concern, habit, and socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, residential area, and educational level). Following this, we collect 552 questionnaires from residents in Tianjin Municipality, China. We use partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the green purchasing intention of the population sample and then employ a multi-group analysis (MGA) to explore the group differences in residents’ green purchasing intention. The results show that green purchasing intention is significantly and positively influenced by attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, and environmental concern but not by habit. The relationship chain of environmental concern→subjective norms→purchasing intention is the strongest. The results of the MGA show that for residential-area groups, the relationships between attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and habits and purchasing intention differ significantly between the downtown group and the outside-the-city group. For the educational-level groups, the relationship between environmental concern and subjective norms differs significantly between the high-education group and the low-education group. Finally, these findings contribute to the literature on the TPB model on green purchasing intention and provide some suggestions for the local government and green marketers.

Keywords: green purchasing intention; extended TPB model; PLS-SEM; multi-group analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/1/30/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/1/30/ (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:jsusta:v:12:y:2019:i:1:p:30-:d:299477

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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