Factors influencing the green purchase behavior of penang environmental volunteers

Abstract

Consumers have started to realize that their purchasing behavior can cause a huge impact to the environment as there is a worldwide concern on environmental degradation issues such as global warming and pollutions. Green is now in the mainstream of modern businesses. Therefore being socially, responsible by offering green (environmentally friendly) products and services should be the practices of any companies that wish to sustain a competitive advantage in today's business world. This study is to investigate on the factors that would influence the green purchase behavior of Penang's green volunteers who are participating in any environmental related activities and also the importance of these factors in terms of their ranking. About 7 variables were used in this study including social influence, self-identity, ecological affect, environmental label, environmental knowledge, environmental attitude and environmental concern. It is found that social influence, environmental concern, green product knowledge (one dimension in environmental knowledge), specific environmental knowledge (one dimension in environmental knowledge), environmental label and income level are having significant impact to green purchase behavior of green volunteers in terms of their ranking of importance. © Medwell Journals, 2011.