UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ---------------------------------- Tran Que Khanh THE IMPACT OF PERSONAL VALUES ON ATTITUDE TOWARD CONSEQUENCES OF PURCHASE AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT IN GREEN CONSUMPTION MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ---------------------------------- Tran Que Khanh THE IMPACT OF PERSONAL VALUES ON ATTITUDE TOWARD CONSEQUENCES OF PURCHASE AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT IN GREEN CONSUMPTION ID: 22120126 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVIOR: Dr. Le Nhat Hanh Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am forever grateful to so many individuals. Without their support, I would have never completed this research. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr.
Le Nhat Hanh, my supervisor, for her valuable suggestions, ideas and comments. She has always encouraged me to finish my master program from the beginning to the end of my work. I would like to extend my appreciation to the other members of committee for their contributions which helped me to improve this research. Thank you to all of people who spent their time and effort for my survey.
Last but certainly not least, I am deeply appreciative of the endless love and good conditional support from my family to complete this work. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Facing with environmental problems all over the world, more and more people turn their talk into walk. In other words, consumers are not only concerned but also getting the idea of being greener. According to this, by buying the ecologically friendly products, they want to reduce their impact of purchase on environment.
Hence, the aim of this research is to examie the impact of personal values on attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in green consumption. A convenience sampling method was employed. In total, 150 Vietnamese consumer responses were collected and used for analysis to test the model. The results show that people who commit with environment are collectivistic oriented; so these consumers usually pay attention to environmental consequences of their purchasing.
On the other hand, individualistic consumers are more likely not to be environmental commitment people because they are concern for themselves too much rather than others, included: welfares and society. This study provides useful information for businesses who are developing eco- friendly products which are not only good for the environment but satisfy consumer’s personal needs also. The result of this study might attract attention of consumer behavior researchers, as well as the firms that care about environmental commitment and pursue the green strategy. Consumers who used to buy green products can be considered as informants in future research in order to explore the underlying reason why they buy the environmentally responsible products.
Key words personal values, consumer attitude, environmental commitment, green consumption. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION--------------------------------------------------------- 1 1.4 Research methodology and scope ---------------------------------------------------- 4 1.5 The significance of the study----------------------------------------------------------- 5 1.6 Research structure----------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES ------------------ 7 2.1The concept of personal values--------------------------------------------------------- 7 2.2 Value – attitude towards consequences of the purchase---------------------------- 8 2.3 Attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment--- 12 2.4 The proposal model---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY------------------------------------- 15 3.5 Data analysis method-------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DATA RESULTS ----------------------- 22 4.2 The reliability test: The Cronbach’s alpha test -------------------------------------- 23 4.3 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) ---------------------------------------------------- 25 4.4 Multiple regression analysis (MRA) -------------------------------------------------- 27 4.1 MRA: to define the impact of collectivistic values and individualistic values on the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase --------------------- 28 4.2 MRA: to evaluate the impact of collectivistic values and individualistic values on the attitude toward the environmental consequences of the purchase ------------ 32 4.3 Multiple regression analysis: to justify the influence of the attitude toward the individual consequences of the purchase and the environmental consequences of the purchase on environmental commitment ------------------------------------------------- 36 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION, MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS ----------------------------------------------- 44 5.4 Limitations and future research -------------------------------------------------------- 48 References ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Appendix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the important of being green to adapt to changing natural environment which are caused by human activities is demonstrated. The situation of Vietnam is also mentioned in order to identify the same circumstances involved environmental problems that any countries on over the world are currently facing. Moreover, factors influencing consumers’ motivation are briefly presented, as well as the relationship between them.
Last one, the purpose, method, significance and structure of this study are also introduced.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND Natural environment is extremely important to the survival and growth of all living on the Earth. Unluckily, environment has been deteriorated by human through increasing utilization natural resources and worldwide consumption, because of the rapid economic growth (Chen & Chai, 2010). It leads to many negative results. For example, global warming, depletion of stratospheric ozone layer, pollution of rivers and sea, light and noise pollution, acid rain and desertification, are consequences of environmental degradation, among other things (Ramlogan, 1997).
All of them are called environmental problems which the world is currently facing. Environmental problems have been concerned by more and more people. But the underlying reasons why human begin to be environmental conscious are not the same due to different personal point of view about the human-nature relationship. According to the first perspective, human depend on nature environment.
And the relationship between human beings and natural environment is interactive. Human activities impact on environment, and then, in turn the environment, it will reactively affect to human being. It represents the utilitarian view. Beside, from ecological- balance perspectives, human, as well as water, land and etc are a part of a whole system in which each element must be balanced with each other.
It is a balanced LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 2 relationship. Although personal point of views may be different from each other, helping the environmental problems society faces today is extremely necessary to human and nature also. So therefore, some of consumers turn their talk into walk by buying ecologically friendly products or products from companies which commit with environment; because being green consumers is one of the ways which can reduce the impact on the environment. In addition, people have not the same personal perspective as each other because of the differences in cognitions, as well as personal values.
All of them lead to their own behaviors. Fraj and Martinez (2006) stated, “Values are considered as the criterion that individuals use to select and justify their actions” (p. In this way, there are many factors involved personal values that best explain consumers’ ecological behavior. From the marketing point of view, business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are become the awareness of society nowadays.
On the other hand, understanding psychographic variables is very useful to companies for identifying the market segment, such as: the segment of consumers who commit with environment in this case. It is also extremely important to facilitate business through diverse strategies. To pioneer research into new green products is one of sample. These new eco-friendly products are expected to be good for environment and serve for personal needs; because it is necessary to satisfy more and more consumers, not the ecological consumer segment only.2 RESEARCH PROBLEMS Comparing with developed countries, environmental topic in developing countries is nearly new, and environmental problems are concerned in recent years.
Vietnam is the developing country with an economic growth rate of about 5.5 percent and a population growth rate of about one percent annually. In addition, Vietnam is an LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 3 under-investigated transition economy (Tsang, 2005), especially in the developing period and globalization, it is very necessity to aware of natural environment. For the reason, environmental problems can be directly or indirectly linked not only to the patterns of production by industries but also to the patterns of consumption and behavior of consumers (Tsen et al. It is anticipated that if the consumers and producers continue irresponsible consumption and production, the environment will be worsen and worsen day by day.
More and more consumers have realized that and they have turned their environmental concern into action (Kangun et al. And purchasing green products is a specific action among others. Consumers express their value of environmental protection through goods and services they purchase. However, generally, there are two reasons which interrelated motivate green purchase, included individual benefits which accrue directly to consumer and environmental benefits which accrue to environment.
The second reason is take account into environmental consequences, which is at best long-term and future-oriented. But, it may in fact be rarely realized by almost consumers. Organic foods are an example that consumers buy because of good for their own health rather than for environment (Bonini and Oppenheim, 2008). These consumers have a weaker green consumption value, and not actually commitment with environment.
For marketers, understanding factors driven consumer’s green purchase is one of the key in green strategies in order to satisfy customers and lead them being loyalty. It is also useful in predicting consumer preference for environmentally friendly products. According to Webster (1975), socially conscious consumer is defined as a consumer who takes public consequences into consideration of his or her private consumption. Likewise, consumers who concern environment will evaluate environmental consequences associated with purchase decision.
In other words, these consumers commit to environment in consumption. And the products they buy not LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 4 only meet their current needs, but also are good for environment. Even they are willing to be inconvenienced in order to take more environmentally friendly actions. Several studies have indicated that the environment concern of individuals have influenced their purchase behavior (Chan, 1996; Donaton and Fitzgerald, 1992; Kerr, 1990; Ottman, 1993; Schlossberg, 1992; Wall, 1995).
Furthermore, a number of the studies have considered personal values to understand what motivate people to buy green products (Kim and Choi 2005; Kim, Choi and Rifon, 2009; Stern, Dietz, and Kalof, 1993) through environmental beliefs (McCarty and Shrum, 2001) or environmental attitude (Grunert and Juhl, 1995; Kim, 2011; Kim and Chung, 2011). However, little attention has been paid to customers who have actually commit to environment in consumption are primarily driven by separated attitude toward products, including individual’s personal consequences and environmental consequences. These consequences can be seen as two group attitude which are affected by personal values. So, the research question is: Do consumers concern for environment when they purchase products? In other words, do they actually commit to environment in consumption? 1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of personal values on the attitude toward consequences of purchase and environmental commitment in consumption.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE The research was conducted on consumers in Vietnam.
It centralizes all gathers and trading activities people come from different social level, as well as provinces and town in our country. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PERSONAL VALUE-ATTITUDE-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT 5 This study just focused its scope on consumers who have already known about the ecologically friendly products, involved: green components, green process and less packing. And it is well defined at the beginning of survey. The researcher handled the collected data and performed them by applying data analysis tools (Microsoft Excel and SPSS).
Next step, the author used Cronbach’s alpha to test the reliability of the scale; doing exploratory factor analysis to identify which item is belong to others and to group them into a fairy large set. After that, the author used multiple regression analysis to check the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables.