Green consumer behaviour : studying factors influencing consumers' green purchase intentions, and the relationship between intentions and actual purchases

Green products have long been promoted as one of the possible solutions to the environmental dilemma that the earth is facing. Recent research also indicates that consumers are also increasingly willing to contribute to the environmental cause by purchasing green products, while businesses are also responding by making green products more readily available. Yet, when competing against conventional products, green products continue to struggle for market share. Unfortunately, studies that have attempted to address this issue have provided conflicting answers by focusing too narrowly on consumers in developed countries. Further, an all-encompassing theory of green consumer behaviour does not exist, as existing research has primarily focused on predicting intentions and not on actual purchase behaviour. Therefore, this establishes the need to conduct further research to better understand the factors that influence green purchase intentions (GPIs) so that the relationship between intentions and actual green purchases (AGPs) can be examined. Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), this research identifies and attempts to address some of the gaps in the existing research on green purchase intention and behaviour by extending and modifying the TPB to the context of green consumers in Pakistan. Hypothesis testing was performed using AMOS based structural equation modelling on a sample (N = 426) of Pakistani consumers. The results of this analysis showed that religiosity is an important value that significantly influences consumers' attitudes towards green products, along with consumers' beliefs about the effectiveness of their actions [i.e., perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE)]. Further, this study also found that GPIs are significantly influenced by consumers' perceptions of quality. Thus, this study identified attitudes, perceived behavioural control, PCE, religiosity and perceived quality as variables that significantly influence GPIs. Additionally, this study found that GPIs have a positive and significant relationship with AGPs. Finally, this study used the one-way analysis of variance test to examine if Pakistani consumers' GPIs would differ based on socio- demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and education. It was found that Pakistani men have significantly higher GPIs compared to Pakistani women. However, significant differences were not found based on education and age. Based on its findings, this study makes important recommendations that are useful to businesses and policymakers, which include improving the availability and affordability of green products and using promotional tools, such as advertising, to improve consumers' perceptions of the effectiveness of their actions (i.e., green buying) in making meaningful environmental contributions. Similarly, this study also recommends the use of promotional tools to disseminate information regarding green product availability and functionality, and to counter consumers' misperceptions regarding the quality of green products. Finally, based on the important role that religiosity plays in affecting GPIs and AGPs, through its effect on PCE and attitudes, this study recommends targeting Pakistan consumers' religiosity by alluding to prosocial values propagated in Islam to encourage consumers to buy environmentally friendly products. This study concludes with a discussion concerning its limitations in terms of methodology and generalisability of the findings. It also discusses what precautionary measures were taken to guard against these limitations and how future research can address these limitations.