Cognitive-affective predictors of green purchase intentions among health workers in Nigeria

Abstract

Consumers’ consumption culture of the twentieth century has culminated into environmental degradation and its adverse consequences on health and the ecosystem. Despite these concerns, consumers still fail to purchase environmentally-friendly or green products due to the lack of awareness and belief about the benefits of such products. This study seeks to understand consumers’ attitude towards green products by investigating the effect of consumers’ green product knowledge, green product belief, environment affect and environmental concern on green product purchase intention drawing on the cognitive-affect-behaviour model. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyse the data from 348 Health workers from a South-eastern Health Institution in Nigeria and examined the proposed hypotheses. The result shows that green product purchase intention was significantly influenced by green product knowledge and environmental affect but no significant effect was found for green product belief and environmental concern. Environmental effects had the most impact on green product purchase intention. Therefore, it is recommended that marketers focus their marketing campaigns towards educating consumers on the availability and benefits of green products by using eco-labels and emphasizing the health and environment benefits of green products; appealing to consumers’ morals and emotions in marketing campaigns for green products to spur consumers’ interest in green products and adopting a green lifestyle.