Adoption of green products : a study of drivers influencing consumers’ intentions to adopt green products

Abstract

In light of the raising concern about environmental issues, consumers and the society are increasingly emphasising the importance of green innovations. However, actual sales of green products do not reflect consumers’ sentiments. Thus, there is an unexploited market potential for green products. Consequently, to influence consumers to choose greener alternatives, and thereby increasing sales of green products, we need information about consumers’ decision making processes in relation to green behavior. This can in turn contribute to maintain a greener society.

The purpose of this paper was therefore to explore important drivers for consumers’ intentions to adopt green products. More specifically, we employed an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behavior model, studying the effects of green product beliefs, attitude, social norm, perceived behavioral control and brand equity on consumers’ intentions to adopt green products. Additionally, we investigated if attitude and brand equity mediated the effect between green product beliefs and intention. Lastly, we explored if there could be any differences in consumers’ drivers for choosing green products depending on the degree of product involvement.

To collect the necessary data, we applied a questionnaire research within a cross-sectional design (N=387), that we further analysed using SPSS 25 and Mplus 7.4. The results show that attitude, social norm, perceived behavioral control and brand equity are important factors to influence consumers’ intention to adopt green products. Additionally, green product beliefs were found to be important for predicting consumers’ intentions as they indirectly affect intention through attitude.