Purchasing intentions of Chinese consumers on energy-efficient appliances: Is the energy efficiency label effective?

Abstract

Abstract Along with the continuous improvement of China's economic level, residents began to pursue high-quality living standards. However, unreasonable consumption patterns and habits caused serious environmental deterioration. Starting from the demand side, the present study explores the influencing factors of Chinese consumers' purchase of energy-saving household appliances, concentrating on the impact of energy efficiency labels on consumer behavior in China. Through combining the Norm-activation Theory model and the Theory of Planned Behaviour model, this study adds information label as the external factor influencing the purchase of energy-saving household appliances according to the research purpose, and analyses the influence of economy and trust on the path of information label. Based on the results, consumers' reference willingness to energy efficiency label information exerts the greatest impact on their intention to purchase energy-saving household appliances, indicating that the guiding role of energy efficiency labels is effective. Nevertheless, the suspicion of label information and economic constraints hinder the conversion from reference willingness to purchase intention. In addition to information labels, consumers' purchase attitudes towards energy-saving products, personal norms and subjective norms significantly affect consumers' purchase intention. Therefore, the current work puts forward relevant policy recommendations on how to promote consumers to purchase energy-efficient home appliances and better exert the guiding role of energy-efficient labels.