Current Trends in Malaysian’s Green Purchasing Behaviour in Supporting Green Economy Movement

Abstract

The Malaysian 2021 Budget reflects the government’s commitment to spurring the green economy with the emphasis to drive public awareness towards environmental conservation agenda despite the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it was recognized that contradictions exist between attitude and customer behavior balancing between lifestyle and environmental issues. Thus, the inconsistencies had created gaps between the two consumer interaction styles which would not be beneficial for market institutions and their customers. Hence, it is important to investigate how consumers interact with the representatives of marketing institutions with the customers’ environmental attitude lifestyle to understand and narrow the green purchasing behavior gap for the survival of the business organizations and the satisfaction of the consumers. Therefore, for this study, a newly developed measurement tool, Environmental Quality Awareness (EQA) was utilized to test the assumptions and to recommend appropriate solutions to narrow the attitude-behavior gap. The research collected 321 Malaysian respondents who are aware of and used household technology products related to the green economy. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Square - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) method. The result indicated that 70% of the EQA framework integrated constructs are supported by the relationship of environmental quality awareness and environmental attitude towards green purchasing. The remainder of 30% of the framework shows a non-supportive hypothesis on the relationship of environmental quality awareness towards green purchasing. Hence, the study indicates that when people are aware of environmental quality and possess an environmental attitude towards sustainable performance, they will eventually lead to trust and purchase green products, thus hence supporting the green economy drive.