Title: The effect of majority's green consumption behavior on individual's purchase intention for green products!
Author(s) : Mohammad Tajvarpour, Devashish Pujari
This study investigates effect of majority’s purchase behavior on individual’s purchase intention and willingness to pay for environmentally and socially sustainable products. Prior work suggests that sustainable products are unique in the sense that they may be considered by consumers to be of high status and low quality (compared to their conventional substitutes). Our experimental study aims to disentangle the normative and informational effects of conformity on purchase of sustainable new products. One of the main findings of this study is that conformity effect on purchase intention for sustainable products holds regardless of the beneficiary being the environment or people. Results show that the normative conformity affects purchase intention of consumers but there is no informational conformity effect. Also, supporting the role of altruism in the purchase of environmentally sustainable products, we find a negative interaction between new product quality assurance and consumers’ green values. To the best of our knowledge this study is the first to investigate and disentangle the effects of normative and informational conformity on purchase of sustainable products.