Social and environmental sustainability model on consumers’ altruism, green purchase intention, green brand loyalty, and evangelism

Abstract

Across the globe, the awareness for environmental degradation and its harmful effects is rapidly growing. The whole world has come together to work in the direction to protect the environment. Consumers are increasingly becoming cautious towards the impact of their consumption pattern on environment and organisations can attain a competitive edge by leveraging this cautiousness by offering them green products/brands. However, it is importance for the marketers to understand that how increasing levels of sustainability awareness impacts other factors which explain pro-environmental behaviour of customers. To fill the existing gap in the current literature in this regard, the current study aims to build a structural model which includes social and environmental sustainability awareness in measuring customer altruism, buying intention, loyalty and customer evangelism. The theoretical model extends the existing framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and explores the decision-making framework regarding ethical behaviour. Through existing literature review and expert input, the indicators (variables) for each construct were recognised. After that, data was collected from 331 respondents through a structurally designed questionnaire; the hypothetical model was test using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique. The findings of the study indicate that sustainability awareness positively influence the consumer altruism which in turn enhances the consumer purchase intention, green brand loyalty and green brand evangelism and altruism can and can bridge value-action gap for green brands. Current analysis supports the view that there are significant positive associations among the identified constructs.