Abstract
As consumption behavior is one of the key human activities destabilizing the Earth system, green consumption is expected to increase. However, although consumers often show interest in green consumption, they tend to choose non-green alternatives. Presuming that one of the reasons for their inconsistency lies in the trade-offs between green attributes and other attributes (e.g., brand, performance, and price), this study adopted a discrete choice experiment to understand how green attributes play a role in consumers’ purchase decisions. To obtain a deeper understanding, the study conducted a cross-country (young Japanese [n = 370] and Vietnamese [n = 403] consumers) and product (water bottles and T-shirts) comparative analysis. The findings showed that for both products, Japanese respondents were less appreciative of green attributes in both relative and absolute terms than Vietnamese respondents. Furthermore, the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for a low environmental impact was the highest among the other attributes in both products for Vietnamese respondents, while this was not the case for Japanese respondents. Utilizing the findings obtained from the conditional logit models and MWTP, this study proposes several policy implications for the promotion of green purchases suitable for each country’s unique situation.
Highlights
Green consumption is seen as a consumption trend of the twenty-first century, when environmental degradation has become a great concern for many countries including Japan and Vietnam
Their environmental knowledge, attitudes, and values were higher than those of the Japanese (Table 3). This is in accordance with the environmental Kuznets curve [78]; the improvement of environmental quality will be tapered at some point, as the marginal utility of additional improvement in environmental quality is declining as the economy grows
As environmental issues become more distressing, green consumption has emerged as a new consumption trend in many countries worldwide [22]
Summary
Since the mid-twentieth century, due to rapid economic growth, human activities have become the dominant driver of environmental changes [1]. Our heavy dependence on fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture has become so severe that it is destabilizing the Earth system on a planetary scale [2]. Consumption behavior is a key human activity that accelerates the degradation process. The dramatic increase in the global consumption of goods and services has resulted in the severe exhaustion of natural resources, changes in global temperature, increases in pollution, and decreases in biodiversity [3]. If global consumption continues to push the Earth system beyond its safety boundaries, the consequences will be catastrophic for much of the planet [4]
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