Purchasing Green Products as a Means of Expressing Consumers’ Uniqueness: Empirical Evidence from Peru and Bangladesh

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi,Jianfeng Jia

doi:10.3390/su10114062

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi, Jianfeng Jia

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114062

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Abstract

Does consumers’ consumption of green products represent a method of satisfying their need for uniqueness? Does it enhance their self-image? In order to answer these questions, the present study attempts to understand how personal-level factors (such as the need for uniqueness) and product-level factors (such as self-expressive benefits) drive customers to go green. Survey-based data were collected from 247 customers in Bangladesh and 132 customers in Peru during 2017–2018. A hierarchical linear regression analysis was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results of this study highlight the important role played by the need for uniqueness as a major driver of green behavior among customers in both countries. Furthermore, self-expressive benefits were found to represent another reason on the part of customers in both Peru and Bangladesh for buying green products. This study hence contributes to the current literature by strengthening existing knowledge of the drivers of pro-environmental purchasing behavior in developing countries.

Highlights

Consumers differ in terms of their level of concern, commitment, and knowledge with regard to the natural environment [1,2]
With regard to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Peru is ranked 64th out of 180 countries with a score of 61.92, while Bangladesh is ranked 179th with a score of 29.56 for the overall environmental performance
Prior to testing the hypotheses, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in order to verify whether a single or common method factor existed to account for the majority of variance in the findings [79,80]

Summary

Introduction

Consumers differ in terms of their level of concern, commitment, and knowledge with regard to the natural environment [1,2]. Such variation leads to differences in customers’ purchasing decisions [3,4]. In the context of developed countries, recent studies have found increased customer awareness of environmental issues [9,10,11,12] Despite this growth in scholarly attention concerning developed countries, there remains an incomplete understanding of why customers purchase eco-friendly products in developing and emerging countries [11,13]. In order to fill this research gap, in the present study, the effects of personal-level factors, such as the need for uniqueness, and product-level factors, such as self-expressive benefits, were tested in relation to customers’ behavior regarding the consumption of green products in Peru and Bangladesh

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Results

Conclusion