Analysis of factors influencing consumers' proenvironmental behavior based on life cycle thinking. Part II: trust model of environmental information

Abstract

In Part I of this study, we showed that consumers' environmental awareness and trust in environmental information can affect their practice of proenvironmental behavior. The aim of Part II is to address the questions: how can these two factors be improved and how can life cycle thinking (LCT) help to achieve this improvement? We developed a model representing relationships between trust and its subfactors by integrating the traditional view of trust and the salient value similarity (SVS) model. A web-based survey was conducted using Japanese adults to verify the model, taking ecolabeling as an example of environmental information based on LCT. The results show that the applicability of the two theories can vary according to the level of environmental awareness of the respondents. In addition, the efficacy of providing LCT-based information in raising consumers' environmental awareness was evaluated on the basis of the survey. The efficacy changed according to the level of LCT skills of the respondents. LCT-based information was effective in improving environmental awareness in respondents with relatively low LCT skills.