Consumer's Influences On Consumer Behavior

Previous empirical researches have established that consumers’ demographic profiles has a direct influences on their environmental thoughts and behavior, and that consumers that take into consideration the effects of their behavior and actions towards the environment differs from the general – related consumer behavior. General purchase behavior is driven by an evaluation of the consumer of the products benefits and the price that is associated with acquiring those benefits. By contrast, environmentally conscious behavior does not deliver instant individual consumer gain or fulfilment but rather a future – oriented outcome that will be beneficial for the society and the economy as a whole. (Mc Cathy and Shrum, 2001; Kim and Choi, 2005) Azizan

Crosby, Gill and Taylor (1981) expounded the meaning by defining it as a “strong attitude towards preserving the environment.” “Attitudes are defined as the enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object or issue.” It refers to the general information a person has about events or issue, some individuals and things that they believe matters to them. (Newhouse, 1991) Social psychology literature on behavioral research has established attitudes as predictors of certain individual behavior, behavioral intention and explanatory factors of variants from any individual. (Kotchen and Reiling 2000) And in many studies, these factors were found to be relevant and substantial predictors of consumer pro – environmental behavior. Mostafa (2007) in his empirical research established that consumers’ attitude towards the environment influences and directly affects their actual green purchase

(Young et. al, 2010) Gupta S. et al (2009) study that consumers’ who are willing to pay the premium price of products that are environmentally friendly are the ones who recycle, reduce household energy consumption, and segregate waste so as not to pollute the environment. This behavior is the basic foundation in forming the consumers’ attitudes as ‘green buying behavior’. The concept of environmental awareness as one of the predictors in green buying first appeared in 1968 in the United States. It was the scholar Roth who recommended environmental literacy as the model of environmental awareness. Laroche et al (2007) defined this knowledge gained from environmental awareness as ‘Ecoliteracy’. “Ecoliteracy measures the consumers’ capability to recognize or explain a number of ecologically – related symbols, models, theories and behaviors.” His study established that ecoliteracy has a significant relationship with some attitudes and behaviors of consumers towards the