Determinants of pro‐environmental behavior and environmentally conscious consumer behavior: An empirical investigation from emerging market

Abstract

Given the due importance of environmentally conscious consumer behavior (ECCB) and willingness to be environmentally friendly (WEF), the aim of this paper is to study the relationships between the determinants of pro‐environmental behavior (e.g., perceived behavioral control, environmental knowledge, environmental concern, and perceived environmental consequences), with ECCB and WEF. The proposed theoretical model is grounded in marketing literature, extends the theory of planned behavior, and empirically tested in the Indian market. A survey with questionnaire was administered to gather data from 510 respondents from the state capital of the country. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses; the results confirm adequate support for the theory of planned behavior and proposed theoretical model. In addition, ECCB found to be significantly influenced by the consumers' environmental knowledge, and perceived environmental consequences, and environmental concern was significantly related to WEF. The study implies that green marketers should direct their marketing efforts towards integrating these four pro-environmental behavior determinants in order to facilitate the ECCB and WEF for green products. For promoting the ECCB, green marketers should strengthen environmental knowledge and perceived environmental consequences to target consumers, and for augmenting the WEF, they should improve the environment concern among consumers. This study contributes to the mainstream literature by ascertaining the distinctive impact of the four noteworthy determinants of pro-environmental behavior on ECCB and WEF in emerging markets.