CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS GREEN COSMETICS: THE LITERATURE SIGNIFYING A SHIFT TOWARDS CIRCULARITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

The purpose is to develop an understanding of the concept of green cosmetics, sustainability, and circularity and identify factors driving or hindering buying behaviour for green cosmetics and consumers' engagement in circular practices while consuming cosmetics in India. Based on secondary data through systematic literature review, this paper identifies the factors affecting consumption behaviour for green cosmetics in an exploratory study. The factors so identified are placed in the TPB (Theory of Planned Behaviour) framework (Ajzen, 1991) as per theoretical understanding to establish the interlinkages between constructs that form antecedents and moderators concerning consumer behaviour for green cosmetics and circular practices in cosmetics consumption. In total eleven factors are identified and placed in TPB model exhibiting motives, facilitators, or barriers affecting consumer behaviour towards green cosmetics and consumers’ engagement in circular practices of cosmetics. Demographic factors are likely to be moderating variables in the framework while the psychographic characteristics of consumers and market strategy factors are expected to be the constructs forming ‘Attitude towards the Behaviour’, ‘Subjective Norm’, and ‘Perceived Behaviour Control’ (TPB model). The proposed model can be used for future studies to empirically test consumer behaviour towards green cosmetics or any other product category based on circularity principles. Since circularity and sustainability in the cosmetics sector are relatively new concepts and are under-researched, the present paper contributes to the existing literature by reviewing existing studies on consumer attitude and engagement towards circularity in green products and identifying several factors, which can also be relevant in the case of cosmetics.