Towards closing the attitude-intention-behavior gap in green consumption: a narrative review of the literature and an overview of future research directions

Why do retail consumers buy green apparel? A knowledge-attitude-behaviour-context perspective

Motivated by United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the importance of sustainability, this study examines how the textile and apparel (TA) supply chains can comply with the SDGs. By examining the literature as well as industrial practices, we show that the current sustainable operations in TA industry are far away from realizing the goals of economic growth going hand-in-hand with the social and environmental sustainability. For instance, among the SDGs, the goals of “Responsible Consumption and Production”, “Clean Water and Sanitation”, and “Climate Action” receive a considerable amount of attention, while goals of “No Poverty”, “Reduced Inequalities”, “Life below Water” and “Life on Land” have the least attention. Balanced sustainable development actions from the stakeholders’ perspective are proposed. Managerial implications and future studies are discussed.

A United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals perspective for sustainable textile and apparel supply chain management

In order to achieve sustainable development to protect the environment and society, an increasing number of scholars have conducted in-depth research on green marketing and green purchases. Although great achievements have been made in this field, there still is room for further progress. This study reviews 97 papers providing empirical research on green purchase behavior from 2015 to 2020. First, we review the widely used consumer theory and its extended application in recent years. Second, we divide the influencing factors of green purchase behavior into the following three categories and discuss them in detail: individual factors, product attributes and marketing, and social factors. Finally, we put forward the following possible directions for future research. (1) The authors can consider adjustment to the survey objects to weaken the subjectivity of the data. (2) Longitudinal research can be used to assess the impact of education and policies with a lagging effect on consumers. (3) The authors can broaden the research direction towards a cross-cultural background. (4) The behavior of various green products (such as recyclable tires, recycled glass containers, recycled paper) could be explored to enrich the research content. (5) It will be beneficial to combine a variety of consumer theories to explore the green purchase behavior of consumers and break through the existing linear hypothesis path to explore new research methods.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/18/6607/pdf

Why Do Consumers Make Green Purchase Decisions? Insights from a Systematic Review

Growing concerns over the environment and climate has led to increased interest in environmentally friendly eating out, especially with respect to the need to reduce waste in the restaurant and cat...

Predicting environmentally friendly eating out behavior by value-attitude-behavior theory: does being vegetarian reduce food waste?

Green thinking but thoughtless buying? An empirical extension of the value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy in sustainable clothing

Increasing consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmentally friendly products is a key challenge for sustainable development in market economies. Still, how consumers react to favorable and unfavorable environmental information of different quantitative extents is largely unknown. This research therefore uses prospect theory and competing theoretical foundations to derive pertinent hypotheses and test them by using a multi‐level structural equation model. The analysis draws on a survey‐based experiment conducted among a representative sample of the German population. Results confirm key assertions of prospect theory. The negative effect caused by unfavorable product carbon footprint information on WTP is stronger than the positive effect caused by respective favorable information. Besides this negativity bias, consumers tend to generally reward or punish deviations of a product's environmental performance from industry average instead of consistently accounting for the size of these deviations. From a sustainable development perspective, the observed patterns highlight a problematic contrast between the need for substantial environmental improvements and limited market incentives for companies. Consequently, political intervention is needed to introduce negative labeling, raise consumers’ reference points, set minimum industry standards, and subsidize companies for radical improvements.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.13141

Kathleen Jacobs

Papers

Green thinking but thoughtless buying? An empirical extension of the value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy in sustainable clothing

Worse is worse and better doesn't matter?: The effects of favorable and unfavorable environmental information on consumers’ willingness to pay

Driven by personal or environmental gains? Investigating consumer motives behind purchasing long-lasting products