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Original Articles

Air pollution and green consumption of consumers in China’s urban areas: a norm activation perspective

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Pages 1988-2010 | Received 20 May 2019, Accepted 18 Jul 2019, Published online: 06 Aug 2019
 

Abstract

This study aims to explore how consumers’ psychological factors affect their pro-environment purchasing behavior in a smog-ridden city. Based on the Protective Action Decision Model and Heuristic–Systematic Model, this study proposed a model to investigate consumers’ decision-making process in purchasing green anti-smog products. It also provided new empirical evidence for the role of personal norms on consumers’ green consumption behavior by examining the differences between two groups of consumers (i.e., green and non-green) through a multi-group path analysis. The predictions were tested using a questionnaire survey of 1,124 participants living in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China. Results indicated that product knowledge, smog knowledge, risk perception, and systematic processing positively affected consumers’ purchase intention. In addition, the significant differences of consumers with various personal norms in purchase decision-making were found in the current study. In the green group, product knowledge positively affected consumers’ risk perceptions and systematic processing intentions. Information seeking increased their purchase intentions. However, these relationships were not significant in the non-green group. This study contributes to the existing literature by linking consumers’ protective behaviors with green consumption and providing a comprehensive model for predicting consumers’ purchase decisions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant #71828102 and #71702080.

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