Factors Influencing Green Consumption Behavior of Muslim Consumers in Bangladesh: Religiosity as a Moderator

Abstract

Green consumption which is termed as environment friendly consumption is inevitable for sustainable development. This research aims at finding and analyzing factors affecting green consumption behavior of consumers in Bangladesh; and it also attempts to see the moderating effect of religiosity between behavioral intention to consume green products and green consumption behavior of Muslim consumers. In this study, theory of planned behavior, and the theory of reasoned action have been taken into consideration for identifying the pertinent factors relating to behavior. The variables include behavioral intention to consume green products, willingness to consume green products, environmental education, group recommendations, and self-efficacy which are deemed to have a direct influence on green consumption behavior while religiosity has been used as the moderator in the relationship between these five independent variables and green consumption behavior. Data were collected from the customers of some selected shopping malls in Bangladesh using multi-stage sampling procedure. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypotheses of this study. It was found that behavioral intention to consume green products, willingness to consume green products, environmental education, and self-efficacy were significant factors which influence green consumption behavior. Among these determinants, behavioral intention to consume green products was found to be the most significant one. It was observed that the group recommendation is less significant as a factor which influences green consumption behavior. In the moderating effect, it was found that the relationship between behavioral intention to consume green products and green consumption behavior was moderated by religiosity. This study offers a new framework proposing the religiosity as a moderator to the green consumption behavior in developing countries. It supplements the existing empirical evidence to address the research gaps and responds to the calls for examining the consumption behavior in a Muslim developing country. The results derived from this research provide several practical implications for managers working in different industries and policy makers specifically, in terms of how to evaluate, build and improve the awareness among the consumers to consume green products.