Green purchase behavior: The effectiveness of sociodemographic variables for explaining green purchases in emerging market

Abstract

Environmental degradation is a serious problem in modern civilization as it causes changes in consumer behavior towards ecologically responsible purchasing. In order to understand the green product purchasing decision process, an extensive literature review on green purchasing behavior was conducted. The current study is an exploratory research and the purpose of this paper was to investigate how sociodemographic factors explain consumers’ green purchase behavior. The differences between gender, age, education level, personal financial situation, and the number of children in the family were examined. To achieve the goal, we conducted a survey among 650 Polish consumers. Our findings suggest that all of the above‐mentioned sociodemographic variables have an impact on awareness and purchasing behavior towards green products. Moreover, the results show that female consumers have more positive attitudes towards purchasing green products, than male consumers. Young consumers are skeptical about green products. A positive relationship was established between education and the acknowledgement of the dominance of one’s own needs over the needs of the environment. The better the personal financial situation, the more people ex-pressed their intention to buy green products. The paper shows the implications for marketing. In addition, our exploratory research shows future research directions based on findings from the point of view of green consumer behavior. The study is an in‐depth analysis of the factors determining green purchasing behavior. It contributes to the current literature by strengthening the ex-isting knowledge about the factors influencing green purchase behavior in developing countries.