The role of pricing and product knowledge on Malaysian consumers’ green purchase intention

Abstract

Green consumption has also risen globally to prevent further damages to the environment. Therefore, it is important to understand the intent of consumers to buy environmentally friendly products as the willingness to buy green products will maintain and protect the quality of natural environment, thus contribute to sustainable environmental development. Even though the number of consumers ready to purchase green products has increased in recent years, there is no indication that this trend would increase in Malaysia. As such, to address the limitations and to cope with the green purchase intention issues, this study aims to propose a framework to investigate the relationships between attitudes, subjective norms, perceive behavior control, product knowledge, price and green purchase intention among consumers in Malaysia by application of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model. The modifications to the original TPB structure help to identify potential factors that affect consumers’ willingness to purchase green products. This study employed an online survey and collected 216 questionnaires from Malaysian respondents aged 18 years old and above by using a purposive sampling method. Multiple regression analysis was employed for data analysis. The findings indicated that attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and product knowledge have a positive and significant relationship with green purchase intention while price has a negative and significant relationship with green purchase intention. Using the findings of the study, marketers could understand the potential factors that affect consumers’ willingness to purchase green products. The findings of the study can be a guideline for future studies to determine the customers' intentions for environmentally friendly products.