Green Stimuli Characteristics and Green Self-Identity Towards Ethically Minded Consumption Behavior with Special Reference to Mediating Effect of Positive and Negative Emotions

Abstract

Research studies related to ethical consumerism has been gaining increasing attention in the last decade due to growing importance with environmental pollution. Research studies pointed out a gap between ethical consumers’ behavior and intention which is common in Sri Lanka as well. Hence the study used emotions and self-identity as two key drivers which assist in exploring the intention-behavior gap that has not been researched so far. Therefore the research problem addressed is “whether the positive and negative emotions aroused as a result of consumer subjective evaluation to stimuli, impact on the ethically minded consumption behavior?”. The study focused only on environmental friendly electrical household appliances and the population is the academics and professionals who reside Gampaha and Colombo suburbs and who bought environmental friendly electrical household appliances within the last one year of duration. The unit of analysis is individual consumers and the convenience sampling method used. 200 individual respondents contributed to the study and the data collection was done through a self-administered questionnaire. The study has used Smart PLS 3.2 software and the results showed that the green stimuli characteristics and green self-identity significantly influence ethically minded consumer behavior and only positive emotions act as a significant mediator. Most importantly if the consumer’s perceived effectiveness is high, despite the presence of emotions ethically minded consumer behavior will be triggered more. In conclusion, marketers have to use positive emotions when creating the stimuli and should give more priority for assuring the individuals small step for protecting the environment.