The Relative Importance of Values, Social Norms, and Enjoyment-Based Motivation in Explaining Pro-Environmental Product Purchasing Behavior in Apparel Domain

Insook Ahn,Munyoung Kim,Soo Kim

doi:10.3390/su12176797

Insook Ahn, Munyoung Kim + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176797

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Abstract

Changing consumption behavior can offer co-benefits in reduction of environmental issues and encouraging improvements to environmentally friendly or sustainable production. We propose a novel value-social norm-enjoyment-based motivation (VSE) model and test the factors that influence individual pro-environmental apparel purchasing behavior. Data were obtained from 353 college students in Korea and analyzed by using SEM. Our results show that individuals who endorse bio-altruistic values who engage in eco-friendly environmental behavior in apparel domain are influenced by descriptive norms and injunctive norms. Further, enjoyment-based motivation was found to be a key mediator among bio-altruistic value, descriptive norms, and injunctive norms on pro-environmental purchasing behavior. However, injunctive norms do not directly influence purchasing behavior, but rather, are integrated to enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, then indirectly affect purchasing behavior.

Highlights

The world faces environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, lack of water resources, air pollution, and hazardous chemical waste
The least strong relationship was between bio-altruistic value and purchasing behavior (r = 0.100)
The findings showed that the more respondents endorsed bio-altruistic values, the greater the enjoyment-based motivations to purchase pro-environment apparel they felt (β = 0.24, p < 0.001), supporting Hypotheses 1 (H1)

Summary

Introduction

The world faces environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, lack of water resources, air pollution, and hazardous chemical waste. To address the negative environmental and human health effects of pollution, consumers need to change their consumption behaviors, in addition to governmental actions. Changing consumption behavior can provide benefits in terms of alleviating environmental issues and encouraging sustainable production. Sustainable consumption behavior can help address global, regional, and foreign environmental issues. When consumers buy environmentally friendly clothing, they can pressure the apparel companies to transition from conventional production methods to eco-friendly production methods by using less water and producing less industrial waste. This in turn improves local water usage and reduces water pollution during production in developing countries. Small changes in everyday behavior can open the way to a more sustainable future

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