Among the proposed antecedents of intention, only attitudinal affections, attitudinal beliefs, self-identity and past behaviour were found to significantly influence intention. The effects of the other antecedents (listed below) on intention were weak and did not reach the required level of statistical significance. Antecedents not confirmed in this study were:
injunctive norms, which were measured in terms of perceived expectations of others and willingness to follow those expectations
perceived self-efficacy and controllability perceived controllability in situations
descriptive norm, which were measured in terms of perceived expectations of the majority and willingness to fit in with the majority. Injunctive norms and descriptive norms are two different types of social norm, and in this study, were hypothesised to have positive and significant effects on respondents’ intentions to purchase environmentally friendly products (Hypotheses 9 and 12). That is, when a person strongly perceives other people’s assumptions that he/she should buy a specific product, he/she is more likely to buy the product. The perceived assumption is addressed as injunctive when it is an explicit expectation (e.g. verbal) from others. When the expectation is implicit (e.g. when the majority are behaving in the specific way), the perceived assumption is descriptive. Past research has found that people tend to comply with the expectations of significant others and/or conform their behaviours to the that of the majority (Ajzen, 1985, 1991, 2006; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; Cialdini, et al., 1990). However, the results of this study did not provide enough statistical evidence to support the normative influences on respondents’ purchasing intentions.
As discussed in Section 2.2.2.4 and summarised above, injunctive norm was conceptually defined as: whether the person perceived any expectations from others, and whether the person was willing to comply with the expectations. These two aspects were measured separately; once the valid indicators were confirmed, an index was created as a measure to assess the influence of the injunctive norm on the intention. However, not enough empirical evidence support that the injunctive norm influenced the respondents’ purchasing intentions. The lack of support for the role of injunctive norm in influencing the intention should not necessarily be interpreted as a failure of the model in the consumer context. In the current research, the respondents did not strongly perceive that they were expected to buy energy-saving light bulbs (i.e. less than 40% of respondents agreed with the items from the injunctive norm IN_Perception construct). They also did not consider others had much influence on their decision making (i.e. less than 31% of the respondents agreed with the items from IN_Comply). Therefore, the influence of the injunctive norm may not be as strong as hypothesised, but further research is needed to explore this notion.
Descriptive norm data were also collected from perception of the majority’s purchasing behaviour and compliance to the perception; then an index was created (by multiplying the valid scores from these two aspects) to assess Hypothesis 12; that is, the influence of the descriptive norm on the intention. However, there was not enough evidence for drawing any conclusions. Similar to injunctive norm, the lack of empirical support for the descriptive norm should not be interpreted as a failure of the factor in influencing respondents’ purchasing intentions, as there was no clear perceived majority who were purchasing energy-saving light bulbs.
According to the relevant literature, the relationship between intention/behaviour and descriptive norm would be significant if the perceived norm was strong (Goldstein, et al., 2008; Nolan, et al., 2008). In Goldsteins et al.’s hotel towel experiment, the fictitious rate of towel re-use was 75% and this was used to create an influential descriptive norm in their research; their results supported their hypotheses. In Nolan et al.’s survey (2008), the mean of the self-reported energy conservation behaviour of others (i.e. ‘How often do you think your neighbours try to conserve energy?’, p. 915) was 2.93 (on a 4-point scale, from 1=not at all to 4=extremely).
The descriptive statistics of the descriptive norm in this study (as detailed in Section 4.2.6) suggested that only 41% (and less) of the respondents perceived that more than 60% of their friends, family, co-workers or neighbours were purchasing energy-saving light bulbs, while more than 40% of the respondents reported that less than 60% of the people from the listed groups purchased energy-saving light bulbs. Numbers imply that either half of the respondents either perceived that the behaviour of purchasing energy-saving light bulbs was not carried out by the majority, or they did not pay attention to other people’s purchasing. In other words, no clear majority was found to fulfil the primary expectation of a descriptive norm (i.e. the perception that there were many people behaving in the same way). Further, less than one-third of the respondents agreed that they would comply with the majority. With no clear majority perceived and low compliance rates, the influence of descriptive norm on respondents’ purchasing intentions was thus found to be less powerful than expected. However, further research is needed to confirm the level of ‘majority’ that can be considered large enough to influence consumers’ purchasing intentions/behaviour.
Ajzen defines the perceived behavioural control construct as, ‘the perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behaviour of interest’ (1991, p. 183). This
definition was adapted to this study as influences on consumers’ purchasing intention; namely, perceived self-efficacy and controllability (i.e. the PBC_Perception construct). Hypothesis 10 states that consumers’ intentions are positively influenced by their perceived controllability of their behaviour and self-efficacy. The valid indicators for measuring the PBC_Perception construct were Affordable (‘Energy-saving light bulbs are affordable for me in terms of my purchasing budget’) and PayMore (‘I would be willing to spend more to purchase energy-saving light bulbs [than on conventional ones]’). Carrington et al. (2010) proposed the concept of perceived controllability in the actual shopping environment, arguing that buyers’ perception of control in the actual shopping environment was more relevant to, and positively influenced, consumers’ purchasing intentions. This research adopted Carrington et al.’s view and defined the construct as perceived controllability in situational context (i.e. the PBC_Situational construct; Hypothesis 11). The valid indicators for measuring this construct were SufficientInfo (‘Sufficient product information’), Availability (‘Availability in store’) and Quality (‘Product quality’). (These indicators were under a pre-set question: While purchasing light bulbs, ___ (the factors below) usually affect my purchasing decision). The study results failed to support Hypotheses 10 and 11 and these findings should not be interpreted as failures of the perceived efficacy and controllability, and the perceived controllability in situational context in influencing respondents’ intentions to purchase energy-saving light bulbs.
The descriptive statistics showed that few people believed that purchasing energy-saving light bulbs was difficult in terms of product availability (only 5.4% of respondents thought the product was difficult to find), affordability (only 19.8% said the product was not affordable on their budget), and time pressure during shopping (only 13.1% said that time pressure influenced their purchasing decisions). These results implied that individuals could ignore the ease or difficulty of purchasing energy-saving light bulbs when it came to forming their intentions, and also resonated with Kalafatis et al.’s findings in the UK and Greek markets. They also found that perceived behavioural control was not a significant factor to the UK consumers, where environmentally friendly products were easy to find, but it was significant for the Greek consumers, as the products were not easy to buy. Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) also pointed out that the effect of the perceived behavioural control on intention could be ignored if the behaviour did not need much effort to be carried out. The findings regarding
affordability and willingness to pay a premium also are in line with other research in New Zealand, which found that more than half of New Zealand consumers were willing to pay a premium for sustainably produced wine (Forbes, Cohen, Cullen, Wratten, & Fountain, 2009). In 2008, Forbes et al. surveyed 109 consumers in Christchurch, which was considered a good representation of the national marketplace, to investigate wine consumers’ demand for, and perceptions of, sustainably produced wine. Nearly three- quarters of their respondents claimed they were prepared to pay a higher price for sustainably produced wine; up to 5% more for one-third of their respondents and up to 11% more for another one-third of their respondents.
6.2.5 Summary
The discrepancy between attitude and behaviour has long been discussed in the literature. Intention was proposed to explain the gap, mediating the effect of attitude on actual behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Findings from this research have suggested that both attitudinal affections and attitudinal beliefs do indeed influence consumers’ green purchasing intentions positively. Influences from self- identity and past behaviour on the intention were supported by empirical evidence, with respondents who identified themselves as energy savers and buyers of energy-saving light bulbs, and who had purchased the bulbs in the past, having stronger intentions to purchase energy-saving light bulbs.