Green products consumption behaviour among industrial engineering undergraduate students based on the theory of planned behaviour

Abstract

Climate change and pollution are reported more and more severe from year to year. All stakeholders need to prevent and control the environment not to be worse by design, produce and consume green products. Although the government and the companies already put their efforts to produce green products, the consumption behaviour needs to be changed to be greener. It is important to educate and raise awareness about climate change and green product consumption behaviour among youngster, especially undergraduate students because they are the ones who will determine the future of the earth. This study investigated green products consumption behaviour among Industrial Engineering undergraduate students who got courses related to the environment and green products based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The survey is conducted to assess students’ environmental knowledge, environmental ethics, environmental social responsibility, environmental self-responsibility, buying intention and consumption behaviour towards green products. The SEM-PLS technique is used to analyse the data and measure the direct effects between constructs. The survey is conducted from April to June 2018 using an online survey and was resulting 181 valid responses consisted of 55.80% male students and 44.20% female students with age range between 18 - 23 years old. The results revealed that there are significant positive influences between the environmental knowledge and behaviour dependent factors (environmental ethics, environmental social responsibility, and environmental self-responsibility). These factors have significant positive influences on buying intention and finally, the buying intention has a significant positive influence on consumption behaviour. The study concludes that the increase in environmental knowledge will bring to consumption behaviour towards green products. The findings of this study could contribute to the adaptation of behaviour change framework towards green products consumption, especially among youngster.