A Study of Factors That Influence Green Purchase

Abstract: Title: “A Study of Factors That Affect Green Purchase”   Due to the environmental issues, green products have got more attention during the latest years and the availability of such products is increasing in many food stores. The appearance of eco-label assists the consumers in the store to buy eco-friendly products which are less harmful to the environment. Eco-labels which are frequently available in the food stores are; The Nordic eco-label (Svanen), Krav, The Euro Flower, MSC label (Marine stewardship council) and Bra Miljöval.  Governments in some countries are supporting these labels to ensure the sustainable development and a better quality of life for everyone, and for the generations to come. A question, which arises here, is that what compels the consumers to choose eco-labelled products over conventional ones. We have short-listed several factors during literature review which can influence the consumers green purchase behavior and these factors are; Eco-motivation, Eco-knowledge, Gender, Peer influence, Price and Shelf space.    The purpose of this study is to get a deeper understanding of the factors that can affect green purchase of food products in the store. Thus our main research question that we want to answer with our study is: “Which are the most important factors that influence the purchase behavior of eco-labelled products?” Along with this main research question we are also interested to know if ‘shelf space’ is an important factor that can affect the consumer’s choice of eco-labelled products in the store. Due to lack of data there is still no clear understanding about the role of shelf space in the purchase decision of green products. To answer these questions we will investigate all these factors and try to understand their influence on consumer green purchase behavior.  This quantitative study is carried out in Umeå, Sweden with 150 respondents and focuses mainly on the food market consumers. We stand on objectivist position for this study and we believe that cross-sectional research design is most suitable to fulfill our research purpose. We developed several null hypotheses and for this purpose we distributed our research questionnaire at the entrance of different super markets in Umeå, Sweden to collect our data from the respondents. We applied convenience sampling with simple quota to this research. We evaluated the gathered data with help of SPSS. Results proved that eco-motivation and shelf space plays vital role (positive correlated) in the purchase decision of eco-labelled products. We have provided statistical evidence that eco-motivation and shelf space induce actual purchase of green products. Eco-knowledge shows to induce interest in eco-labelled product but does not help in actual purchase of eco-labelled products. Surprisingly price and gender has not shown any influence on the consumer green purchase. We believe that our findings and recommendations can contribute in the area of consumer’s ecological behavior research. Due to our sampling technique (convenience) and small size of our respondent we cannot generalize the results of this study.   Key words: Purchase decision, Green marketing, Eco-labeling, Shelf space, Eco-motivation, Eco-knowledge, Gender, Price, Peer influence