Does Consumer's Green Consumption Behavior Intention lead to Actual Green Behavior A South Asian Country Perspective

Abstract

Peoples attitudes regarding green values, beliefs and norms of various aspects of the full cycle of environmentally friendly purchasing, using and disposing behavior have become an important consideration in human decision making. However, attitudes and behavioral intention do not always leads to actual behavior and there is a doubt about this phenomenon in different empirical domains. Hence, this study attempts to address this presumed gap by adapting the Stems VBN Theory and Adjzens TPB. Therefore, the objective this study is to elucidate the impact of consumers green attitudes and behavioral intention on actual green behavior of green packaged products in Sri Lanka from an Asian country perspective. This research has used interpretive mixed-method research approach in order to strategically achieve the aforesaid research objective. Initially, a survey was carried out using a sample consisting household consumers who reside in Colombo district using self-administered questionnaires and a total of 718 responses were collected. The survey strategy has been subjected to test self-reported attitude-behavior relationships and then the qualitative triangulation followed by in-depth interviews to justify its significance in capturing uncovered reality. Multivariate statistical analysis in Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) was used to analyze data and results show that Sri Lankan's attitudes of green packaged products purchase, usage and disposal intention is very high (75%), but intention towards actual green behavior is rather low (24%). It has been justified by the findings of the in-depth interviews, namely; difficulties in identifying green packaged products, less trust, high price, time & busy lifestyle, habit first goes to well-known brands, and less availability of green packaged products are the main constrains to select and buy green packaged products, Moreover, the qualitative insights also indicate that there were some perceived behavioral difficulties in adapting disposal behavior such as a lack of knowledge to identify technical information on packages about recycling; lack of space at home for composting; poor attend of waste separation; unaware of recycling centers in living area and poor government commitments. This research would be directly significant and beneficial to government policy designers and marketers in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries at large.