Determinants of the green purchasing behaviour of public servants
Creators: name: BUDIMAN, Luthfi
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 350602
subject: Consumer-oriented product or service development

description: Despite decades of research in the field of green consumption and the significance of environmental consciousness promulgated by people around the world, the sale of green or environmentally friendly products is still far from reaching targets and comprises only a small fraction of the total market. Without a significant change to this trend, the overconsumption of non-green products will have a lasting detrimental impact on the environment globally. Changing attitudes and consumption behaviour to favour the purchase of green products will be necessary to reduce the harm consumers have on the environment. 

Academics and practitioners have acknowledged the discrepancy between behavioural intention and actual green purchasing behaviour and have identified that the main cause of this gap is the lack of insights into the determinants of green purchasing behaviour. To address this phenomenon, this study develops a model of green purchasing behaviour (GPB) that extends the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Specifically, this study investigates a unique population, public servants, which has attracted little attention to date in the marketing literature. This public servant domain has a close connection to social capital development through civic engagement that benefits behavioural change in the society.

This study investigated the cause of the discrepancy by deductively analysing the Theory of Planned Behaviour using a survey methodology. Data were collected through online questionnaires conducted in 24 cities across West Java Province, Indonesia. The study found that the personal value of perceived consumer effectiveness is a prominent antecedent of attitudes towards green purchasing. This study also successfully modelled a structure that reflects the social phenomenon of the discrepancy between intention and behaviour while simultaneously suggesting the effectiveness of the mediating variable, non-workplace civic participation, between the attitudinal variable and the green purchasing behaviour.

Mediation analysis found that the relationship between attitude and green purchasing via non-workplace civic participation was statistically significant (p&lt;0.05), while the same correlation path through intention was non-significant. This important role of non-civic participation was reinforced through the important-performance mapping analysis which found that the non-workplace civic participation has the most important value (0.4) among the variables in the model.

The model empirically reinforces the weakness of the intention variable in the Theory of Planned Behaviour when explaining the green purchasing behaviour of public servants. The new model developed in this study explains the congruence among personal value, attitudinal value, contextual value and green purchasing behaviour. It also infers that the model is parsimonious due to the possibility that all the variables related to green purchasing behaviour prediction can be categorised and composited into personal, attitudinal, and contextual. Theoretically, this study contributes to a comprehensive explanation of GPB through the congruence of personal and contextual constructs under the TPB framework. Importance-performance mapping analysis also highlights that non-workplace civic participation is an important construct that can predict green purchasing behaviour and that price sensitivity is a potential prominent barrier that can reduce its overall predictability.

Managerial implications of this study include insights into how public servants can be mobilised as consumers and indirect marketers of green products, thus supporting government policy towards sustainable behaviour in society. Thus, a policy that supports green purchasing behaviour through non-workplace civic participation that is postulated by the government could potentially increase the green purchasing behaviour prediction of public servants. Cluster analysis identified specific segments of public servants that can be targeted through the implementation of such policies. Green business entities could also shift their strategy from a conventional advertisement campaign which is proven to be ineffective to a corporate social responsibility project that involves public servants. This civic participation of public servants is a practical trigger of social capital which can further affect social and economic development of communities.