The impact of personal values on attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in green consumption

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Tran Que Khanh THE IMPACT OF PERSONAL VALUES ON ATTITUDE TOWARD CONSEQUENCES OF PURCHASE AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT IN GREEN CONSUMPTION MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Tran Que Khanh THE IMPACT OF PERSONAL VALUES ON ATTITUDE TOWARD CONSEQUENCES OF PURCHASE AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT IN GREEN CONSUMPTION ID: 22120126 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVIOR: Dr Le Nhat Hanh Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am forever grateful to so many individuals Without their support, I would have never completed this research I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Le Nhat Hanh, my supervisor, for her valuable suggestions, ideas and comments She has always encouraged me to finish my master program from the beginning to the end of my work I would like to extend my appreciation to the other members of committee for their contributions which helped me to improve this research Thank you to all of people who spent their time and effort for my survey Last but certainly not least, I am deeply appreciative of the endless love and good conditional support from my family to complete this work ABSTRACT Facing with environmental problems all over the world, more and more people turn their talk into walk In other words, consumers are not only concerned but also getting the idea of being greener According to this, by buying the ecologically friendly products, they want to reduce their impact of purchase on environment Hence, the aim of this research is to examie the impact of personal values on attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in green consumption A convenience sampling method was employed In total, 150 Vietnamese consumer responses were collected and used for analysis to test the model The results show that people who commit with environment are collectivistic oriented; so these consumers usually pay attention to environmental consequences of their purchasing On the other hand, individualistic consumers are more likely not to be environmental commitment people because they are concern for themselves too much rather than others, included: welfares and society This study provides useful information for businesses who are developing ecofriendly products which are not only good for the environment but satisfy consumer’s personal needs also The result of this study might attract attention of consumer behavior researchers, as well as the firms that care about environmental commitment and pursue the green strategy Consumers who used to buy green products can be considered as informants in future research in order to explore the underlying reason why they buy the environmentally responsible products Key words personal values, consumer attitude, environmental commitment, green consumption TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION - 1.1 Research background - 1.2 Research problems - 1.3 Research objective - 1.4 Research methodology and scope 1.5 The significance of the study - 1.6 Research structure - CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES 2.1The concept of personal values - 2.2 Value – attitude towards consequences of the purchase 2.3 Attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment - 12 2.4 The proposal model 13 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY - 15 3.1 Research design - 15 3.2 Sample size 15 3.3 Measurement 15 3.4 Research process 17 3.5 Data analysis method 19 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DATA RESULTS - 22 4.1 Sample characteristics 22 4.2 The reliability test: The Cronbach’s alpha test 23 4.3 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) 25 4.4 Multiple regression analysis (MRA) 27 4.4.1 MRA: to define the impact of collectivistic values and individualistic values on the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase - 28 4.4.2 MRA: to evaluate the impact of collectivistic values and individualistic values on the attitude toward the environmental consequences of the purchase 32 4.4.3 Multiple regression analysis: to justify the influence of the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase and the environmental consequences of the purchase on environmental commitment - 36 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION, MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS -44 5.1 Discussion 44 5.2 Conclusion - 46 5.3 Managerial implications 46 5.4 Limitations and future research 48 References - 50 Appendix PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the important of being green to adapt to changing natural environment which are caused by human activities is demonstrated The situation of Vietnam is also mentioned in order to identify the same circumstances involved environmental problems that any countries on over the world are currently facing Moreover, factors influencing consumers’ motivation are briefly presented, as well as the relationship between them Last one, the purpose, method, significance and structure of this study are also introduced 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND Natural environment is extremely important to the survival and growth of all living on the Earth Unluckily, environment has been deteriorated by human through increasing utilization natural resources and worldwide consumption, because of the rapid economic growth (Chen & Chai, 2010) It leads to many negative results For example, global warming, depletion of stratospheric ozone layer, pollution of rivers and sea, light and noise pollution, acid rain and desertification, are consequences of environmental degradation, among other things (Ramlogan, 1997) All of them are called environmental problems which the world is currently facing Environmental problems have been concerned by more and more people But the underlying reasons why human begin to be environmental conscious are not the same due to different personal point of view about the human-nature relationship According to the first perspective, human depend on nature environment And the relationship between human beings and natural environment is interactive Human activities impact on environment, and then, in turn the environment, it will reactively affect to human being It represents the utilitarian view Beside, from ecologicalbalance perspectives, human, as well as water, land and etc are a part of a whole system in which each element must be balanced with each other It is a balanced PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT relationship Although personal point of views may be different from each other, helping the environmental problems society faces today is extremely necessary to human and nature also So therefore, some of consumers turn their talk into walk by buying ecologically friendly products or products from companies which commit with environment; because being green consumers is one of the ways which can reduce the impact on the environment In addition, people have not the same personal perspective as each other because of the differences in cognitions, as well as personal values All of them lead to their own behaviors Fraj and Martinez (2006) stated, “Values are considered as the criterion that individuals use to select and justify their actions” (p 134) In this way, there are many factors involved personal values that best explain consumers’ ecological behavior From the marketing point of view, business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are become the awareness of society nowadays On the other hand, understanding psychographic variables is very useful to companies for identifying the market segment, such as: the segment of consumers who commit with environment in this case It is also extremely important to facilitate business through diverse strategies To pioneer research into new green products is one of sample These new eco-friendly products are expected to be good for environment and serve for personal needs; because it is necessary to satisfy more and more consumers, not the ecological consumer segment only 1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEMS Comparing with developed countries, environmental topic in developing countries is nearly new, and environmental problems are concerned in recent years Vietnam is the developing country with an economic growth rate of about 5.5 percent and a population growth rate of about one percent annually In addition, Vietnam is an PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT under-investigated transition economy (Tsang, 2005), especially in the developing period and globalization, it is very necessity to aware of natural environment For the reason, environmental problems can be directly or indirectly linked not only to the patterns of production by industries but also to the patterns of consumption and behavior of consumers (Tsen et al., 2006) It is anticipated that if the consumers and producers continue irresponsible consumption and production, the environment will be worsen and worsen day by day More and more consumers have realized that and they have turned their environmental concern into action (Kangun et al., 1991) And purchasing green products is a specific action among others Consumers express their value of environmental protection through goods and services they purchase However, generally, there are two reasons which interrelated motivate green purchase, included individual benefits which accrue directly to consumer and environmental benefits which accrue to environment The second reason is take account into environmental consequences, which is at best long-term and future-oriented But, it may in fact be rarely realized by almost consumers Organic foods are an example that consumers buy because of good for their own health rather than for environment (Bonini and Oppenheim, 2008) These consumers have a weaker green consumption value, and not actually commitment with environment For marketers, understanding factors driven consumer’s green purchase is one of the key in green strategies in order to satisfy customers and lead them being loyalty It is also useful in predicting consumer preference for environmentally friendly products According to Webster (1975), socially conscious consumer is defined as a consumer who takes public consequences into consideration of his or her private consumption Likewise, consumers who concern environment will evaluate environmental consequences associated with purchase decision In other words, these consumers commit to environment in consumption And the products they buy not PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT only meet their current needs, but also are good for environment Even they are willing to be inconvenienced in order to take more environmentally friendly actions Several studies have indicated that the environment concern of individuals have influenced their purchase behavior (Chan, 1996; Donaton and Fitzgerald, 1992; Kerr, 1990; Ottman, 1993; Schlossberg, 1992; Wall, 1995) Furthermore, a number of the studies have considered personal values to understand what motivate people to buy green products (Kim and Choi 2005; Kim, Choi and Rifon, 2009; Stern, Dietz, and Kalof, 1993) through environmental beliefs (McCarty and Shrum, 2001) or environmental attitude (Grunert and Juhl, 1995; Kim, 2011; Kim and Chung, 2011) However, little attention has been paid to customers who have actually commit to environment in consumption are primarily driven by separated attitude toward products, including individual’s personal consequences and environmental consequences These consequences can be seen as two group attitude which are affected by personal values So, the research question is: Do consumers concern for environment when they purchase products? In other words, they actually commit to environment in consumption? 1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of personal values on the attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in consumption 1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE The research was conducted on consumers in Vietnam It centralizes all gathers and trading activities people come from different social level, as well as provinces and town in our country PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT This study just focused its scope on consumers who have already known about the ecologically friendly products, involved: green components, green process and less packing And it is well defined at the beginning of survey The researcher handled the collected data and performed them by applying data analysis tools (Microsoft Excel and SPSS) Next step, the author used Cronbach’s alpha to test the reliability of the scale; doing exploratory factor analysis to identify which item is belong to others and to group them into a fairy large set After that, the author used multiple regression analysis to check the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables 1.5 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY After this research, it is hopeful that its founding will play an important role in predicting environmental commitment in consumption in order to develop the suitable strategies to encourage, as well as educate consumers to choose and buy the ecofriendly products instead of the non-responsible alternative ones; and to research & develop more new green products which not only are friendly with environment but satisfy consumers also 1.6 RESEARCH STRUCTURE This thesis included five chapters  Chapter 1: Introduction In this chapter, the author presents the research background of the study, research problems, research objectives and the research structure  Chapter 2: Literature review and hypotheses This chapter presents the fundamental theories and concepts which invloved in The proposal model and hypotheses are also presented in this chapter PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 2: Không đồng ý 3: Trung lập / Khơng có ý kiến 4: Đồng ý 5: Hồn tồn đồng ý Phần chính: ST Câu hỏi T Tôi làm việc chăm cho mục tiêu nhóm, khơng dẫn đến công nhận cá nhân Tôi người hợp tác tham gia hoạt động nhóm Tơi sẵn sàng giúp đỡ người khác họ cần giúp đỡ Những việc làm tốt cho hầu hết người nhóm, chí cá nhân tơi nhận Tôi chia sẻ với người khác Tôi nhất, khác với người khác nhiều khía cạnh Tơi cạnh tranh với người khác Tôi làm việc cách độc lập với người khác Nếu sản phẩm xanh không phù hợp với nhu cầu tôi, chọn sản phẩm thay khác PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 10 Nếu sản phẩm xanh không thuận tiện cho sử dụng, chọn sản phẩm thay khác 11 Nếu sản phẩm xanh khơng có nhiều kích cỡ cho tơi chọn lựa, chọn sản phẩm thay khác 12 Điều quan trọng với sản phẩm sử dụng không gây hại cho môi trường 13 Tơi xem xét tác động tiềm ảnh hưởng đến môi trường, đưa định mua hàng nhiều lựa chọn 14 Thói quen mua hàng bị ảnh hưởng mối quan tâm môi trường 15 Tôi sẵn sàng bất tiện để có hành động thân thiện môi trường 16 Tôi muốn mua sản phẩm xanh tương lai, đắt sản phẩm thay loại 17 Tôi muốn giới thiệu sản phẩm xanh cho bạn bè người khác 18 Tơi nói điều tích cực sản phẩm xanh cho người khác 19 Tơi khuyến khích người khác mua sản phẩm xanh Thông tin cá nhân: Giới tính: PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Tuổi tác: Dưới 18 tuổi Từ 18 – 25 tuổi Từ 26 – 35 tuổi Từ 36 – 45 tuổi Trên 45 tuổi Trình độ học vấn: Dưới Trung học phổ thơng Trung học phổ thông/ Trung cấp nghề Cử nhân cao đẳng/ đại học Cao học Nghề nghiệp tại: Sinh viên/ học sinh Giáo viên/ giảng viên/ Cán ngành giáo dục Nhân viên/ Quản lý ngành nghề khác Khác Thu nhập hàng tháng (ĐVT: triệu đồng/ tháng) Dưới triệu đồng/ tháng Từ – 10 triệu đồng/ tháng Trên 10 triệu đồng/ tháng Chân thành cám ơn hợp tác Anh/ Chị/ Bạn PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix C: Results of Reliability test for Collectivistic Values (CV) Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Inter-Item Correla CV1 CV2 CV3 CV4 CV5 Summary Item Statistics Item Means Item Variances Inter-Item Covariances Inter-Item Correlations CV1 CV2 CV3 CV4 CV5 Scale Statistics PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix D: Results of Reliability test for Individualistic Values (IV) Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha 803 Inter-Item Correlation Matrix IV1 IV1 IV2 IV3 Summary Item Statistics Item Means Item Variances Inter-Item Covariances Inter-Item Correlations IV1 IV2 IV3 Mean 10.020 PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix E: Results of Reliability test for Individual Consequences of Purchase (ICP) Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Inter-Item Correlation Matrix ICP1 ICP2 ICP3 Summary Item Statistics Item Means Item Variances Inter-Item Covariances Inter-Item Correlations ICP1 ICP2 ICP3 Scale Statistics PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix F: Results of Reliability test for Environmental Consequences of Purchase (ECP) Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha 882 Inter-Item ECP1 ECP1 ECP2 ECP3 ECP4 Summary Item Statistics Item Means Item Variances Inter-Item Covariances Inter-Item Correlations ECP1 ECP2 ECP3 ECP4 Scale Statistics PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix G: Results of Reliability test for Environmental Commitment (EC) Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Inter-Item C EC1 EC2 EC3 EC4 Summary Item Statistics Item Means Item Variances Inter-Item Covariances Inter-Item Correlations EC1 EC2 EC3 EC4 Scale Statistics PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix H: Histogram, Normal Regression & Scatter plot of Dependent Variable: Individual consequences of the purchase PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix I: Histogram, Normal Regression & Scatter plot of Dependent Variable: Environmental consequences of the purchase PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT Appendix J: Histogram, Normal Regression & Scatter plot of Dependent Variable: Environmental commitment PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT ... individualistic values on the attitude toward the environmental consequences of the purchase The last time was to justify the influence of the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase and. .. purchase on environment Hence, the aim of this research is to examie the impact of personal values on attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in green consumption. .. Multiple regression analysis: to justify the influence of the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase and the environmental consequences of the purchase on environmental commitment