Consumer Behaviour in Green Purchasing: A Case Study in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Abstract


 
 
 Malaysia faces several environmental issues, such as rising sea levels, water pollution, air pollution, climate changes, acid rain and soil erosion for the past few years. It is important to save the environment because by doing so, it will not only attract more tourists from foreign countries to come for vacation in Malaysia, but it also encourages manufacturers and consumers to support green product. Therefore, Malaysia should allocate the use of green products in daily life. Still, there are marketers who face problems in identifying and specifying factors that influence consumers to go green, which are; price, knowledge, eco-label and social influences. The environmental problem as well as lack of literature research about green products purchasing intention and minor companies that are involved in green production are also one of the problems that lead to the difficulties of this allocation. This research aims to identify the relationship between price, knowledge, eco-label and social influences towards consumer green purchase intention in Petaling Jaya. A theoretical model was developed and tested using quantitative survey approach. The data collection which are designed in five Likert-scale were gained from random 150 respondents in Petaling Jaya based on non-probability sampling. The results indicate that the most significant relationship between consumer green purchase intention is price. While knowledge, eco-label and social influences play important role too in influencing consumer purchasing intention towards green product although they do not give the most significant relationship. It is concluded that price sensitivity is found to be relative and consumers are willing to buy green product if the price of the green product is the same as the other non-environmental-friendly product.