Fostering consumer green buying intention towards residential homes with green living concept through marketing activities

Abstract

Residential property with a green living concept refers to housing development with environmentally friendly green features that range from design, construction and maintenance. Due to global warming, climate change, the greenhouse gas effect and the competitive property market, many property developers have opted to construct green property development to contribute to sustainable development. However, not many consumers intend to buy a home with the green living concept. Understanding consumers' green buying intention in the current competitive market becomes crucial to selling such property successfully. Thus, this research investigates the drivers of consumers' buying intention of properties with a green living concept. By employing the S-O-R theory, which can predict behavioural response when people are exposed to various stimuli, this research examines the effect of an environmental advertisement, green brand positioning, and environmental attitude towards consumers' buying intention towards housing with a green living concept. Moreover, this research also examines the moderating effect of willingness to pay more. Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey from Malaysian consumers. 370 usable questionnaires were analysed using the Partial Least Squares (SmartPLS 3.0) technique. The findings indicate that environmental advertisement and green brand positioning significantly affect consumers' environmental attitude and enhancing consumers' green buying intention. The findings of this research contribute to the understanding of housing developers' marketing policy and subsequently contribute to their market positioning strategy to attract green home buyers. It is suggested that green housing developers need to prioritize developing proper green positioning and environmental advertisement to positively change consumers' attitude towards housing with a green living concept. Nevertheless, willingness to pay more was found not to affect the relationship between environmental attitude and consumer's green buying intention. This result indicates that Malaysia's consumers are price-sensitive when considering purchasing residential property with a green living concept. Thus, housing developers need to price their houses reasonably.