Consumer Behaviour towards Buying Green Products

This paper discusses the role of anticipated emotions such as pride and guilt in purchasing green products. It explores the relationship between such emotions and the purchase of green products or services. The article also talks about the consistency principle and how it affects the market of green products.

Running head: CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS BUYING GREEN PRODUCTS
Consumer Behaviour towards Buying Green Products
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1CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS BUYING GREEN PRODUCTS
Abstract
This paper intends to talk about the role of anticipated emotions such as pride and guilt; in
purchasing green products. As the price of such equipment are high people perceive these as
out of their budget and do not realize the fact that if they resist themselves from contributing
towards such business practice, the price will never drop as resources would remain limited.
These following paragraph has discussed the consumer behaviour and its indicators while
deciding to purchase eco-friendly products.

2CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS BUYING GREEN PRODUCTS
Anticipated emotions affect the behaviour of buying green product
There are two different type of emotions which works as anticipated emotions while
making decisions of buying an energy efficient, hence a green product. Recent researches
have explored the relationship between such emotions like pride and guilt and purchase of
green products or services. Both the emotions help consumers to buy products which creates
a significant impact on environment. According to Antonetti and Maklan (2014), consumers
with belief on their power of changing degrading environment condition tend to behave more
in a sustainable way. It has been noticed that consumers perceive themselves as the reason of
sustainability consequences (Nigama et al. 2018).
Out of guilt consumers can hardly resist themselves from buying from green product
or at least they think of buying so. However, as described in do Paço et al. (2013), due to the
higher price it is not affordable for all the people of cultural and economic background. There
are people of fortune can easily buy an energy efficient electric car and call himself an
environment lover. At the same time, there are people who try to use cycles in order to save
gasoline for environmental reasons. There is the difference between taking pride of owning
something green and voluntary effort of saving environment lies. Anticipated emotions are
generally make their will stronger for purchasing green products yet the economic conditions
resist them to do so. Therefore, instead of buying green products they tend to avoid products
which do not maintain the environmental guidelines properly. For instance, they reject plastic
bags, opt for jute bags and recyclable products. Moreover, save water and electricity if they
are driven by the motive of contributing towards sustainability. Consumers with an energy
efficient vehicle, or who installed solar panel to their home cannot be considered as
environment friendly only. There is no doubt that they have concern for environment as well

3CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS BUYING GREEN PRODUCTS
yet pride is a major driver in many cases, while purchasing such valuable eco-friendly
equipment.
Consistency principle
It is true that people who are investing in green products are few. Therefore, the
market of green products is small and manufacturing units are facing difficulty to invest in it.
Due to its limited segment people tend to perceive a view that it is not going to help the
environment. Consequently, refrain themselves from buying eco-friendly items. However, as
stated in Onwezen, Bartels and Antonides (2014), they do not realise the fact that if they do
not start to invest in it the market will never be promising for the business practitioners, who
seek fortune by investing on business of green products acknowledging the future demand of
those. It will be possible to buy a solar panel as easily as gasoline if people start to trust these
products, ready to invest on it gradually and make less excuses of calling them expensive. As
for saving the electricity, water and gas no one needs to be rich and influential. Therefore, if
people try to get rid of such negative emotions by educating themselves about their capability
of contributing towards environmental sustainability, people would have a better planet to
live.

4CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS BUYING GREEN PRODUCTS
References
Antonetti, P., & Maklan, S. (2014). Feelings that make a difference: How guilt and pride
convince consumers of the effectiveness of sustainable consumption choices. Journal
of Business Ethics, 124(1), 117-134.
do Paço, A., Alves, H., Shiel, C., & Filho, W. L. (2013). Development of a green consumer
behaviour model. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 37(4), 414-421.
Nigama, K., Selvabaskar, S., Surulivel, S. T., Alamelu, R., & Magaeswari, S. (2018, March).
Impact of Awareness, Agreement and Perceived Constraints on Purchase Decision of
Green Technology Products-A Structural Equation Modelling Approach. In 2018
Internat2018 International Conference on Computation of Power, Energy,
Information and Communication (ICCPEIC) ional conference on computation of
power, energy, Information and Communication (ICCPEIC) (pp. 064-071). IEEE.
Onwezen, M. C., Bartels, J., & Antonides, G. (2014). Environmentally friendly consumer
choices: Cultural differences in the self-regulatory function of anticipated pride and
guilt. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40, 239-248.