Elsevier

Journal of Business Research

Volume 68, Issue 9, September 2015, Pages 1974-1981
Journal of Business Research

Environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions: The mediating role of learning strategy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.01.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Environmental concern (EC) is thought to predict environmental purchase intention (EPI).

  • However, the strength of the EC-EPI relationship is inconsistent at best.

  • Intentional and incidental learning strategies mediate the EC-EPI relationship.

  • These mediation effects are moderated by consumers’ consumption levels.

  • These findings may account for the inconsistent EC-EPI relationship.

Abstract

While environmental concern is often conceptualized as a direct antecedent of environmental purchase intention, empirical findings in support of this relationship are inconsistent at best. This study consequently investigates the direct and indirect effects of environmental concern on environmental purchase intentions in an effort to better understand these inconsistent findings. Using a cross-sectional sample of consumers (n = 599), this study finds that intentional and incidental learning strategies mediate the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions. However, the mediating role of intentional (incidental) learning increases (decreases) as consumers reduce their levels of consumption. The authors discuss the managerial implications arising from these findings.

Introduction

Environmental concern encapsulates a consumer’s affective evaluation of environmental issues (Lee, 2008) and is often conceptualized as an immediate antecedent to environmental purchase intentions (e.g., Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2012, Hedlund, 2011, Koenig-Lewis et al., 2014, Paladino and Ng, 2013), which captures the extent to which individuals are prepared to purchase products and services from firms with a reputation for being environmentally friendly. Despite this common conceptualization, however, the magnitude of the relationship between these two constructs is inconsistent at best (Boulstridge and Carrigan, 2000, Carrigan and Attalla, 2001, Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007), giving rise to the notion that environmental concern plays an equivocal role in the decision making processes surrounding environmental purchasing (Akehurst et al., 2012, Fransson and Gärling, 1999, Pickett et al., 1993, Wearing et al., 2002). Thus, an unresolved issue in the literature is whether the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions is conditional upon the existence of additional constructs.

Clarifying the constructs that potentially mediate the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intention is of theoretical and empirical importance, and represents the key contribution of the current study. Specifically, this study tests whether environmental concern encourages consumers to undertake additional learning in order to better understand how their purchase choices can address the environmental issues that have elicited their concern. Such learning may, in turn, provide the knowledge necessary to translate environmental concern into environmental purchase intentions. Advancing existing knowledge, this study proposes that intentional and incidental learning strategies (Gursoy and McCleary, 2004, Hutchinson and Alba, 1991, Hutchinson and Eisenstein, 2008) mediate the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions.

The learning strategies that consumers adopt to evaluate the environmental attributes of available product and service choices are unlikely to occur in isolation, emerging instead in response to broader economic and sociocultural trends. In line with this reasoning, the current study further proposes that as consumers reduce their overall consumption levels, the mediating effect of intentional (incidental) learning strategies will increase (decrease). This focus on reduced consumption is particularly relevant in light of two recent trends that have had an inhibitory impact on general consumption patterns: the global financial crisis (McKibbin & Stoeckel, 2009) and growing consciousness regarding the adverse environmental impacts of consumption (Iyer and Muncy, 2009, McDonald et al., 2006).

In sum, this study explains how and under what conditions environmental concern translates into environmental purchase intentions. In so doing, the study contributes to the literature by offering an alternative and more refined perspective on the not so straightforward relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions. The study also emphasizes the importance of learning strategies and reduced consumption in changing and shifting consumers’ purchase intentions towards more environmentally responsible choices.

Section snippets

Environmental concern

Evaluative constructs are commonly conceptualized as immediate antecedents of intention. For instance, in the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), attitude towards a behavior directly informs an individual’s intention to perform that behavior. Similarly, in the health belief model (Rosenstock, 1974), the way in which an individual evaluates the outcomes of behavior influences their intention to enact that behavior. Theorists working within the environmental domain have drawn upon these

Sample and procedure

The authors obtained institutional ethics approval prior to commencing participant recruitment. An online survey panel recruited 599 consumers aged 18 years and over (55% female) to take part in the study in return for a small monetary reward (AU$5.00, equivalent at the time of the study to US$4.55). The majority of participants (59%) were aged between 18 and 44 years, approximately half (48%) held a full-time professional position, and 65% had obtained a tertiary education. Almost half (47%) of

Mediation analysis

Consistent with H1, the mediating effect of intentional learning on the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions was significant (b = .09, 95% CI [0.04, 0.14], p < .001; see Table 3). Results also supported H2, with incidental learning mediating the relationship between environmental concern and environmental purchase intentions (b = .23, 95% CI [0.15, 0.32], p < .001). An ancillary analysis contrasting the strength of the indirect effects was also conducted. As

Environmental concern

Environmental concern is often conceptualized as a direct predictor of environmental purchase intentions, and this conceptualization implicitly assumes that becoming environmentally concerned will result in the adoption of an automatic set of environmental shopping preferences. On the basis of the current findings, this assumption is overly simplistic. Specifically, consumers appeared to require information to support the environmental evaluation of available purchase choices before they could

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    The authors gratefully acknowledge the International Car Distribution Programme Australia (ICDPA) for the financial support of this research, enabling the independent collection and analysis of the data. In particular, the authors thank Graeme Addison, Director of ICDPA, for ongoing support throughout the research. The authors also thank Michael Jay Polonsky for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

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