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INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC ECONOMIC SYSTEM CONFERENCE (I-iECONS 2021)
Green Purchase Behavior In A Developing Nation: A Study On Bangladesh Perspective
Nabila Islam
Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) E-mail: [email protected]
A. M. Shahabuddin
International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC) E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
The study aims at determining consumer green purchase intention in Bangladesh by using theory of planned behavior and it has further extended with perceived value and willingness to pay premium as additional construct. A self-administrative questionnaire through using convenience sampling method was employed for collecting data from respondents. The researchers have interviewed 370 respondents from different supermarkets in Chattogram district. Our findings through factor analysis revealed existence of underlying five variables. The value of current study will be potential for policy makers, academicians and business owners with the understanding of green consumption and business strategies.
Keywords: Attitude; Perceived value; Green purchase intention
1. Introduction
The increasing growth of sustainability issues and environmental consciousness has placed the words green products, green purchase behavior and socially consumption responsible patterns as identified by Lee (2008).
Several scholars have looked at consumer behaviour in order to evolve green consumption and environmental conservation principles that will aid in the process towards sustainable movement in emerging markets (Mainardes et al., 2017). Furthermore, there are few studies regarding the eco-friendly behavior of the customers in Bangladesh specifically.
The past literature shows that TPB has been used in the wide range of eco-friendly products and services such as energy efficiency products (Ha & Jhanda, 2012), green hotels and restaurants (Chen and Tung, 2014; Chou et al., 2012; Han et al., 2010; Han and Kim, 2010) and green products (Liobikienė et al. 2016) and proved its robustness and predictability for measuring eco-friendly purchase intention and behavior. In most of the cases TPB fully supported (i.e. all the TPB variables; attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control significantly influences consumers' green purchase intention) the consumer intention and behavior to opt for eco-friendly products and services. However, in a few cases (Chou et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2013) TPB variables partially supported the consumers' intention and behavior.
The present research has used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework to understand the consumers' behavior towards purchasing green products. As per the model, human behaviour is influenced by three types of values: behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs, which lead to specific results such as attitude toward behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Along with this, the present research has extended the TPB framework by including constructs (perceived value and willingness to pay a premium) in the TPB for measuring its impact on consumer green purchase intention and behavior. The authors took into account
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perceived value because it plays a significant role in green purchasing decisions, since customers would not sacrifice a product's functional benefit for the sake of the environment. As a result, it's important to consider how customers value green products. Further, willingness to pay premium was considered as high price of eco-friendly product is still an issue for price sensitive Bangladeshi consumers.
Perceived value
When consumers have the option of choosing between product attributes and product greenness, they are more likely to choose product attributes over greenness (Ginsberg & Bloom, 2004). In view of this companies may increase consumer purchasing intent through raising product values; as a result, perceived value is becoming increasingly important (Steenkamp & Geyskens, 2006), as it is a major indicator of customer purchase intention (Zhuang et al., 2010). The decision to buy green and environmentally sustainable products is positively related to perceived green value (Chen and Chang, 2012; Chen et al., 2012).
Willingness to pay premium (WPP)
Consumers' willingness to pay a higher price for socially conscious products is critical for businesses, (Gleim et al., 2013) and it is adversely associated with the decision to buy green products (Ling, 2013).
On the basis of TPB assumptions and above discussed literature the following hypotheses were proposed:
H1. Attitude does not influence the consumer's intention to buy green products.
H2. Subjective norm does not influence the consumer's intention to buy green products
H3. Perceived behavioral control does not influence the consumer's intention to buy green products.
H4. Perceived value positively does not influence the intention to buy green products
H5. Consumer's willingness to pay premium (WPP) does not influence their intention to buy green products.
On the basis of discussed hypotheses, a theoretical framework (see, Fig. 1) was proposed.
Fig.1. Theoretical framework 2. Materials and methods
Similar to Hussain et al. (2017), self-administered questionnaires with convenient sampling procedure were used.
While demographic information has no impact on the level of analysis of this study, the reporting may provide a generalized view. Most of the customers are male (90%) who were 50 years old or older at the time of data collection during January to February, 2021 were included in this analysis. The survey started with the screening questions to verify that the respondents met the criteria of the survey (i.e., year born/SSC passed year). Each of the constructs was measured using a five-point Likert scale, with 5 being strongly agree, 1 being strongly disagree.
Attitude
Green
Purchase Intension Subjective norms
Perceived Behavior Control Perceived value
Willingness to pay premium
111 2.1 Data collection
A pilot study was conducted to check the reliability and the validity of the questionnaire before data collection.
Considering the suggestion from the pilot survey, some wordings were refined in the questionnaire to make it more understandable from the consumer perspective. Initially, the population was brief about the survey's topic. Finally, a total of 600 questionnaires were distributed among the target population at AGORA, Sopno, Khulshi Mart and Basket supermarket in Chattrogram district, the commercial capital of Bangladesh. Supermarkets are the main location for purchasing safe food, mostly because of consumers’ high confidence in the safety and quality of food sold in supermarkets. The benefit of using group administration approach is that it allows rapid data collection with high response rate (Adler & Clark, 2006). A total of 410 responses were returned, but only 370 valid responses (74% response rate) were considered in the study excluding incomplete responses. Regarding the sample size, Kline (2011) has advocated for 10 sample/item. The study consists of 20 items in total, so the final sample of 370 meets the prior condition.
The items were adopted from validated scales employed in various studies and later modified and refined into 20 items. Attitude was measured adopting six items from Kim and Han (2010), subjective norm and perceived behavior control were measured using four items adopted from Chan and Lau (2002), and from Kim and Han (2010).
Perceived value was assessed using five items of (Chen and Chang, 2012), Willingness to pay premium (WPP) was measured with two items adopted from Kang et al. (2012). Purchase intention was measured adopting three items from Kim et al. (2013).
2.2 Reliability and validity
In the study, the Bartlett's test of sphericity is found significant that is, its associated probability is less than 0.05.
In fact, it is actually 0.000, i.e. the significance level is small enough to reject the null hypothesis. From the analysis it has been found that all research variables had eigenvalues larger than 1. All factors included high factor loading (.45-.95) and were statistically significant (p<0.001). This study has performed Cronbach’s Alpha test of reliability for consistency and the positive correlation between the model’s variables. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha result was 0.979, which indicates a high degree of reliability (George & Mallery, 2003). Content validity is established by showing that the test items are a sample of a universe in which the researchers are interested.
The factor analyses were diagnosed and found to have met the necessary statistical assumptions as indicated by their high Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure in conjunction with the diagonals of the anti-image correlation matrix possessing values above .5.
Firstly, internal consistency were measured and found higher reliability with Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.97 (Sekaran, 2006, Nunnally and Bernstein, 1998). The eigenvalues are larger than 1. All factors were statistically significant (p<0.001).
2.3. Multiple linear regression
The study employed linear regression analysis to test the relationship between predictors and dependent variable.
The regression model was found to be statistically significant. The regression model explained 79 per cent (R2) of the total variance and was significant at F (2, 158) = 15.06, p < 0.000. Tables A3 and A4 represent the model summary for the regression model and ANOVA model, respectively. Variance inflation factor (VIF) scores as well as tolerance scores were used to diagnose possible multi co-linearity, which appeared to be well below the threshold limit (Hair et al., 2006)
3. Discussions
The old consumers' green purchasing behavior is confirmed by the multiple linear regression model. As a result, the high degree of participation of older customers would almost probably result in greener use. According to studies younger users are concerned about environmental concerns (Coddington, 1993; D’Souza et al., 2007).
However, our findings correlate with his observation. Our regression model clearly shows that further participation of the younger generation is needed to accelerate sustainable consumption.
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Table 1. Correlations statistics of model variables
Variables GPI 1 2 3 4 5
GPI 1.000
Attitudes .629* 1.000
Subjective Norms .442* -.009 1.000
Perceived Behavior Cotrol .347* .060 .293 1.000
Perceived value .469* .333 .090 .037 1.000
Willing to pay premium .239* .024 .078 .079 .104 1.000
Source: Prepared by the authors
Correlations were computed using Pearson correlation coefficient wherein it gives the measure of correlations.
The value of correlation coefficient lied between -1 to +1 and it indicated that there is no correlation.All of the belief components were found to have significant impact on their outcome. The regression model shows that hypotheses H1, H2, H3 and H4 are rejected and alternative hypotheses are supported.
The findings fully supported the role of TPB variables in determining the consumers' intention towards the green products. This shows the applicability of TPB in determining the consumers' intention and behavior to purchase green products in context of a developing nation; Bangladesh. Among the added constructs perceived value was reported to have a significant positive influence on the consumer green purchase intention which supported the findings of Chen and Chang (2012) and Rizwan et al. (2013) that emphasizes that role of perceived value of green products in making decisions. Willingness to pay premium (WPP) was not reported to have any significant impact on consumer's green purchase intention which contradicted the findings of Choi and Parsa (2007), Kang et al.
(2012), Shen (2012). This may be because price is still an issue for Bangladeshis as they are price sensitive in nature (Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007).
Table 2. Model summary
Model R R2 Adjusted R2 Std. Error of the Estimate
1 .889 .790 .786 .13694
Source Prepared by the authors
R-square shows the total variation for the dependent variable that could be explained by the independent variables. A value greater than 0.5 shows that the model is effective enough to determine the relationship. In this case, the value is .790, which is good.
Table 3. ANOVA
Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig.
1
Regression 25.593 7 3.656 94.970 .000
Residual 6.788 362 .019
Total 32.381 369
a. Dependent Variable GPI (Green purchase intensions) Source: Prepared by the authors
Thus the p-value should be less than 0.05. In the above table, it is .000. Therefore, the result is significant. These results estimate that as the p-value of the ANOVA table is below the tolerable significance level, thus there is a possibility of rejecting the null hypothesis in further analysis.
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Table 4. Regression coefficients
Model Standardized Coefficients T Sig. Collinearity Statistics
B Beta Tolerance VIF
1
(Constant) .875 8.993 .000
1 .251 .543 21.199 .000 .883 1.132
2 .138 .326 12.252 .000 .816 1.226
3 .114 .191 7.502 .000 .895 1.118
4 .099 .247 9.511 .000 .859 1.164
5 .048 .131 5.364 .000 .965 1.036
Source: Prepared by the authors
The value should be below the tolerable level of significance for the study i.e. below 0.05 for 95% confidence interval in this study. Based on the significant value the null hypothesis is rejected.
If sig. value is less than 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected. Here the Sig. value is .000, null hypothesis is rejected. It means there is relationship between variables. The Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) is within acceptable threshold; thus it is free of multi collinearity. The multiple linear regression model confirms that the consumer’s environment concern is significant in explaining their green purchase behavior. Hence, promoting environmental protection should be a call embodied with soft message delivery which will indirectly result into a more involved green response from old consumers. Studies have also suggested that old consumers are more concerned with environmental issues than older consumers (Coddington, 1993; D’Souza et al., 2007). Chan (1998) has examined the worth of young people towards local and general environmental issues. Our findings correlate with his observation.
More involvement of old generation is necessary to fast pace sustainable consumption as also is clearly revealed by our regression model.
4. Conclusions
The research has supported the well-established socio-psychological model, i.e. TPB and its extension in determining the consumers' green purchase intention in the context of a developing nation; Bangladesh. The research can help academicians to further look at the other constructs which may influence the consumers' green purchase behavior.
This emphasizes the importance of maintaining favorable availability conditions that will encourage and ease customers' decision to purchase green products (de Leeuw, 2015). Furthermore, marketers must pay attention to their customers' attitudes, as this has a direct impact on their green purchasing intentions. Consumers' attitudes toward green may be improved by raising consciousness in society, which may lead to a positive perception of green products among the general public. Additionally, marketers should educate customers of how the green products they sell can help both the environment and the customers.
Furthermore, marketers can use both online and offline advertising to shape attitudes toward a niche consumer segment that is highly appealing to retailers. As a result of the current study, marketers should be aware of trends that can help them explain their sensitivity and understanding in order to influence their buying behaviour.
International marketers can confidently assume that the Bangladesh market can be profitably targeted as population is environmentally aware. For the price sensitive consumers, other credentials of the products should be disseminated such as safety benefits, health benefits, long term cost saving, etc. (Gilg et al. 2005). Therefore, clear communication about a company's green values can raise the perceived value of green products.
The study has certain limitations that should be addressed in the future studies. The study has used self-reported behavior (Kormos and Gifford, 2014) for measuring consumer's green purchase behavior, instead of actual behavior.
Further, the present research has measured the green products in general, whereas the past studies have reported that consumer behavioral intention differ across various ranges of green products such as energy saving appliances, organic food, organic care products, etc. which limits the generalizations of the findings. Moreover, the respondents' self-selection biases could lead to an over-representation of such participants in the survey, potentially biasing (Hage et al., 2009). Further, the study is limited to the educated respondents which may result in biased findings as educated people may be more prone to socially desirable response (Kaiser et al., 2008). Considering this the future studies may opt for random sampling approach among population to get a generalized reporting of consumer's green purchase behavior.
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