The Impact of Consumers’ Attitudes on Green Purchase Intention

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of consumers’ attitudes on green purchase intention in Sri Lanka, due to the lack of consensus that exists in the causal ordering of either antecedent or mediating variables. Additionally, the literature provides mixed results for the effects of consumers’ intention on green purchase intention in the global context while there are few studies in the Sri Lankan context. This study is an attempt to fill these research gaps. The data were collected over randomly administering structured questionnaires from 100 green product buyers in Galle district, Sri Lanka. The partial least square path modeling (PLS) was used to measure the impact of social influences, environmental consciousness, environmental responsibility, and health consciousness, on green purchase intention. The findings of the study provided new ways to develop green marketing strategies for organizations by considering environmental concerns, environmental responsibilities, health consciousness, and social influences.


INTRODUCTION
Recently, the importance of natural resources has increased as limited resources have been utilized to satisfy peoples' needs. The attitudes of people change towards the environment and its protection (Choshaly, 2017). Many organizations in the world focused to produce environmentally friendly products to fulfill their customer's needs and also today most customers increase their willingness to consume environmentally friendly products (Sharma and Aswal, 2017).
Because of many environmental issues derived from human civilization, people concentrated more on the environment. Therefore, the attitudes and behaviors of the people changed to purchase and consume environmentally friendly products (Joshi and Rahman, 2015). Uncontrolled environmental pollution, overpopulation, and scarcity of natural resources, people became aware of the global issues and concepts of sustainability spread widely. Now we are in the 21 st century, peoples' intention and purchasing power has moved into environmentally friendly products and green product concept. This reason affects to increase in the demand for green products (Choshaly, 2017). Environmentally friendly products and green consumption were the most vital concepts (Valentini, 2011;Sharma and Aswal, 2017) and these concepts are the most famous among the researchers (Lasuin and Ching, 2014;Jeevandas, et al., 2019). Although many researchers (Ali and Ahmad, 2012;Souza, et al., 2007;Joshi and Rahman, 2015) conducted researches by focusing the factors like price, quality, demographic characteristics, customer's characteristics, Some of the researchers (Choshaly, 2017;Vazifehdoust, et al., 2013;Tan and Lau, 2011;Jaiswal and Kant, 2018;Rana and Paul, 2017) conducted their research based on attitudes of consumers as environmental concern, perceived customer effectiveness, green advertising, green labeling, social influences, health consciousness. According to the aforementioned research findings, the literature provides mixed results for the effects of some antecedent and mediating variables upon purchase intention of green products.
Moreover, such empirical disagreement points to a need for further research in some areas (Nyborg et al., 2006;Dipeolu et al., 2009). Especially, researchers (Yamaqupta, 2018; Alaboodi and Eneizan, 2019) point out the importance of consumer's attitudes to examine the impact of consumers' attitudes to green purchase intention in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, this study attempt to fill this research gap by focusing on consumers' attitudes towards green purchase intention.

Green purchase intention
Research studies were conducted by Beckford et al., (2010) and Chan (2001), and they have concluded that green purchase intention is a significant predictor of green purchase behavior, which means that purchase intention is positively affecting the probability of a customer decides that he or she will buy green products. According to Aman et al., (2012), Rashid (2009), and Ali and Ahamad (2012), an individual's willingness to consume green products than traditional products, it can be defined as green purchase intention. Several research which observed green purchase behavior was focused on the theoretical relationships of attitude, intention, and behavior through the Theory of Reasoned Action (Aman et al., 2012;Ng and Paladino., 2009;Wahid et al., 2011).

Social Influence
According to Wahid et al. (2011) "social influence is a proxy of the subjective norm". Furthermore, Social influence is the changes in a person's attitude and behavior which are influenced by another person's action such as persuading and threatening (DeLamater and Myers (2010). A study of the Jakarta cases (Irawan and Darmayanti, 2012), stated that social influence was the second-lowest determinant on the green purchasing behavior among university students. The author concluded finally that the topic of environmental issues particularly environmental-friendly products was not encouraging among the group of university students in Jakarta. Thus, social influence does not have a significant effect on green purchase behavior. According to Varshneya, et al. (2017), stated that there is no impact on consumers' attitudes as well as purchasing intention, a research conducted by focusing on young adult Indian consumers.

Environmental Consciousness
Many studies were conducted on the influence of environmental consciousness on green purchasing behavior (Irawan and Darmayanti, 2012;Aman et al., 2012;Albayrak et al., 2013). One of those research conducted by Irawan and Darmayanti (2012)

Environmental Responsibility
Many types of research point out that intention to green products purchase is influenced by many facts as environmental attitudes (Chekima, et al., 2016;Maichum, et al., 2017) and price (Sharaf and Md. Isa, 2017). Consumers who have positive attitudes towards environmentally friendly products and environmental concern, they tend to that they are responsible to engage environmental protection measures (Yusof, et al., 2013). Choshaly, in her 2017 study examined that perceived environmental responsibility is recognized as the top indicator of consumers' green purchase intention related to the usage of recycling bags on university students in Malaysia. Yue, et al., in their 2020 study that focused on Chinese consumers, concluded that there was a positive impact on green consumption intention and it can promote environmental concern.

Health consciousness
According to Abdulsahib, et al., (2019), Green products' quality is much greater than the other available products and contain original vitamins and minerals along with this they are free from chemical induction to preserve it. Furthermore, it has stated that green product contains pure vitamins that are having high percentage than the other ordinary products that are being made artificially such as Vitamin C is the most required element for the human body that includes in the green products. It develops the immune system in the human body to fight and protect against the disease such as cancer. According to Rahim, et al., (2012), the consumers who are interested about in green products displayed a positive attitude towards consumption. They tend to change their daily life and routine works to a new way of consuming green products.

Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework provides a clear guide of the way for research and it helps the researchers to make research findings very meaningful and acceptable level (Adom, et al., 2018). For the preparation of the conceptual framework, the previous researches findings most important.
The conceptual framework of this study shows the following figure 1, regarding consumers' attitudes and green purchase intention.

Figure 1: Conceptual framework
Source: Developed for this study (2020)

Social Influence and Green Purchase Intention
The customers have to face a social dilemma when purchasing environmentally friendly products because they comprise higher-cost items. It is important to consider the social effects of buying green products. Group of people likes to imitate another individual who is a member of the group about what they have or aspire to have consistent with their pro-environmental attitudes (Hasan, et al., 2018) H 1 : Social influence has a positive impact on green purchase intention

Environmental Consciousness and Green Purchase Intention
Environmental consciousness refers to the degree of emotionality, specific factual knowledge, and the knowledge of environmental issues (Chen, 2013). If consumers have enough knowledge and awareness about environmental issues, they tend to spend money on green products or they have a positive opinion towards the consumption of green products. However, consumers who are mostly aware of environmental issues don't consider the higher price of the products (Eneizen, et al., 2019). Most researchers (Irawan and Darmayanti, 2012;Aman et al., 2012;Albayrak et al., 2013) concluded that the environmental consciousness of consumers has a significant impact on their green purchase intention. Because of environmental consciousness, people pay attention to environmental issues and try to minimize them. Therefore, environmental concerns have a positive impact on green purchase intention. As mentioned above the second hypothesis is developed as follows.
H 2 : Environmental consciousness has a positive impact on green purchase intention.

Environmental Responsibility and Green Purchase Intention
People who are knowledgeable about environmental responsibility are trying to save the nature, environment, and society from the dangerous effects of non-green products. An emotional involvement or behavior and attitudes of a person on environmental issues means Environmental Responsibility. (Abhasi, et al., 2015). Many researchers (Yusof et al., 2013;Choshaly, 2017) stated that environmental responsibility has a significant impact on consumers' green purchase intention because most people tend to that they are responsible for environmental protection. The people who are more responsive to the environmental issues, willing to pay more and buy green products because they tend to that products give less harm to the environment (Yamaqupta, 2018).
According to that, environmental responsibility positively impacts consumers' green purchase intention and the third hypothesis is developed as follows.
H 3 : Environmental responsibility has a positive impact on green purchase intention.

Health Consciousness and Green Purchase Intention
Every people have to right to select and consume safe and healthy products because human health is crucial for every human being (Abdulsahid et al., 2019). Consumers who have healthconscious are learning towards long-term utilitarian than shortterm hedonic aspects (Mai and Hoffman, 2015). Many researchers (Dipeolu et al., 2009;Rahim, et al., 2012) concluded that the people who care about their healthy life are interested to buy green products. Most people think that green products develop their immune systems also. Not only that, most people persuade to the green products because they think that green products contain original vitamins and minerals and they help to maintain their healthy life (Eneizan and Alaboodi, 2019). Therefore, the other independent variable is Health consciousness and the fourth hypothesis developed as follows.
H 4 : Health consciousness has a positive impact on green purchase intention.

Research Context
Nowadays green concepts and healthy foods are most familiar to us because the Department of Agriculture in Sri Lanka tries to build up a great image of healthy food items in people's minds. In 2012, they introduced "Helabojun" to the people who are most likely to consume healthy and natural tasty foods. Nowadays most supermarkets have followed the green concept by creating a green image on their consumer's minds. Some of supermarkets in Sri Lanka are introducing reusable bags for the customers and they provide facilities to the customers to purchase most green products. Some super markets changed the background of the outlets as green concepts and it indicates that they change as green concepts.

Sample, Study variables, Questionnaire Design, and Data collection
Population means an entire group that the researcher hopes to use for the research. It may be a group of people, objects, or events grouped by common features (Kenton, 2020). Sample represents a whole population and it refers to the smaller and manageable part of the population (Kenton, 2019). According to the above definitions, the population of this study is the consumers who purchase and consume environmentally friendly products in Sri Lanka and the sample is consumers who purchase and consume environmentally friendly products in Galle District. The telephone directory is used as a sample frame because a sample frame is a list or device that the researcher can select a sample from the population (Lewis-Beck, et al., 2004). The random sampling technique is most suitable for this to select the sample from the population because the sample is limited to Galle District. Green product user in Galle District is the unit of analysis of this study.
Data collection is the systematic process used to gather relevant information for stated research questions that enables to test of hypotheses and evaluate research outcomes (Kabir, 2016). Both primary and secondary data are collected. Primary data is collected by providing questionnaires to selected sample and questionnaires are the main source which is used to gather primary data. Secondary data is gathered from websites, articles, magazines, and leaflets relating to green products, internal records. The questionnaire contains three sections: background of the consumer, questions related to the variables which are included in this study, and demographic aspects.
Out of 200 questionnaires, 140 questionnaires were received and 40 questionnaires were rejected because of uncompleted and the response rate was 70%.
Although data analysis has been done by using PLS, demographic data and background data have analyzed using SPSS. According to background data, 93 respondents were green consumers and only 7 respondents were not the green consumer among 100 respondents.
Therefore, to measure the path analysis using PLS-SEM, the study used only 93 questionnaires. 35 respondents use supermarkets to buy green products and 22 respondents use agricultural outlets to buy green products. 10 respondents use personal shops and 11 respondents use both supermarkets and agriculture outlets.
Remaining 15 respondents use all options as supermarkets, agricultural outlets, and personal shops to buy green products.
Among average monthly income level. According to that the people who are in the highest monthly income level have attitudes towards green products. Considering the gender 51.6% respondents were male and 48.4% respondents were female. Most of the respondents (55 respondents) were in the 31yrs-40yrs age group and 19 respondents represent the 41yrs-50yrs age group. 13 respondents represent above 51 age group and remain 06 respondents were in the 20yrs-30yrs age group. The second section of the questionnaire consisting of five variables and six items are considered to measure the green purchase intention those are taken from Kong, et al., 2014;Yamaqupta, 2018;Ng and Law, 2015;Eneizan and Alabboodi, 2019;and Saichao, 2016. According to the previous researches, five items (Puspitasari, et al., 2018;Saichao, 2016) for social influence, five items (Ng and Law, 2015;Yue, et al. 2020 and Eneizan and Alabboodi, 2019) for environmental consciousness, five items (Yamaqupta, 2018;Ng andLaw, 2015 andYue, et al. 2020) for environmental responsibility and four items (Eneizan and Alabboodi, 2019 and Saichao, 2016) for health consciousness were selected to measure the impact on green purchase intention and they are measured by using five Likert scales which is 1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=moderate, 4=agree, and 5=strongly agree.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Discriminant validity assessment is used for analyzing relationships between latent variables.
Cross   (β = 0.767: t= 5.709). The factor loadings of the re-specified measurement model were considerably better than the first model. All factor loadings vary between 0.64 and 0.79 which were reasonably high. The composite reliability was 0.749 which was higher than the recommended minimum level of 0.60 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988) and the average variance extracted was 0.501 which was the minimum level suggested by Fornell and Larker (1981 . According to the respecified measurement model, the factor loadings varied between 0.68 and 0.79. The composite reliability of this variable was 0.844, which is higher than the recommended level of 0.6 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988), and the AVE value of 0.576 which is higher than the recommended level of 0.5 suggested by Fornrll and Larcker (1981).
Green Purchase Intention: There were 06 items stated under this variable and all items were retained because the CFA value of all items was taken more than 0.6 and the selected items were mentioned as follows. I plan to switch to a green version of products (β =0.627; t=6.657), I am willing to continuously buy green products (β= 0.745; t= 12.151), I am willing to pay more on green products (β=0.746; t=12.555), I have high intention to buy green products (β= 0.687; t= 9.258), I will make every effort to consume green products (β= 0.769; t= 15.918) and When I want to buy a product, I look at the ingredients label to see if it contains things that are environmentally damaging (β= 0.771; t= 14.093). The composite reliability and average variance extracted were 0.869 and 0.527 respectively of this variable. The factor loadings of the re-stated measurement model of green purchase intention vary between 0.63 and 0.76. The composite reliability of this variable was 0.870, which is higher than the recommended minimum level of 0.60 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). The AVE value of this variable was 0.528, which is higher than the minimum level of 0.50 suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981).

Model fit
A good model fit refers to a model that accurately approximates the output when it is provided with unseen inputs. Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), exact fit criteria d_ULS and d_G, Normed Fit Index (NFI), Chi-Square are the measures offering from Smart PLS.  (Ullman, 2006). The NFI value should be represented between 0 and 1. The above table 2, shows the NFI value as 0.535 and it indicates that the model is better.

Structural Model
The structural model in figure 2 is evaluated with respect to the estimates and hypothesis tests regarding the causal relations between exogenous and endogenous variables specified in the path diagram. Standard errors and test statistics for the relevant parameters are estimated in SmartPLS with the Bootstrapping option.

Figure 2: Structural model
Structural modal for the research conceptualized between factors like social influence, environmental consciousness, environmental responsibility, health consciousness, and green purchase intention. The β = 0.393 and t=4.215 values were between social influences and green purchase intention as well the p<0.000. The values between environmental responsibility and green purchase intention as follows depend on 3 items: β= 0.178; t=1.659 and p>0.05. Depend on 3 items, the values between environmental consciousness and green purchase intention were as follows: β=0.333; t=3.396, and p<0.000.
The values between health consciousness and green purchase intention depend on 4 items were β=0.030; t=0.292 and p>0.05.

Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing is used to tests an assumption regarding a population parameter. The methodology followed by the analyst depends on the nature of the data used and the reason for the analysis. Hypothesis testing is helped to assess the acceptability of a hypothesis by using sample data from a population or data generating process (Majaski, 2020).

Social Influence and Green Purchase Intention
Hypothesis 1 mentioned that social influence has a positive impact on green purchase intention. The analyzed data is supported to prove this (β=0.393; t=4.215; p<0.000) and those findings indicate that the effect is in the expected direction and that the effect is statistically significant.

Environmental Consciousness and Green Purchase Intention
Hypothesis 2 postulated that there is a positive impact of environmental consciousness on green purchase intention. This hypothesis is supported by the analyzed data (β=0.333; t=3.396; p<0.000). The findings indicate that the effect is in the expected direction and that the effect is statistically significant.

Environmental Responsibility and Green Purchase Intention
Hypothesis 3 stated that environmental responsibility has a positive impact on green purchase intention. The analyzed data (β=0.178; t=1.659; p>0.05) is not supported to prove the above-mentioned hypothesis. The findings are statistically insignificant.

Health Consciousness and Green Purchase Intention
Hypothesis 4 stated that health consciousness has a positive impact on green purchase intention. This hypothesis is not supported by the analyzed data because the findings are statistically insignificant. The results mentioned as follows: β= 0.030; t= 0.292; p>0.05).

DISCUSSION
This study mainly focused on the consumers' attitudes and their impact on green purchase intention. Consumers' attitudes are measured under four variables as social influences, environmental consciousness, environmental responsibility, and health consciousness. Through this study identified that social influence, and environmental consciousness were a positive impact on green purchase intention and environmental responsibility and health consciousness were not positively impact green purchase intention. As concluded by many researchers (DeLamater and Myers, 2010;Ohman, 2011) Social Influences was significantly impacted on green purchase intention in this study. Most respondents aware of environmental issues and environmentally friendly products as well they share information with others. Therefore, their awareness of the environment was improved. The results of this study found the 65% of respondents represent below 40 years and it was indicated that the young and Middle Ages mostly like to use green products. Therefore the higher and efficient motivation campaigns need to change attitudes towards green purchase. Environmental consciousness has also taken a positive impact on green purchase intention as concluded by many researchers (Irawan and Darmayanti, 2012;Aman et al., 2012;Albayrak et al., 2013). This study identified that many people emotionally involved in environmental protection issues, they think about the environmental quality and importance to raise environmental awareness among people. Therefore many educational awareness programs, motivational programs can be done to persuade people towards green products by using many sources.
Many researchers (Yusof et al., 2013;Choshaly, 2017) concluded that there was a positive impact between environmental responsibility and green purchase intention. But in this study, there was no significant impact between environmental responsibility and green purchase intention. Therefore all organizations have to follow several strategies by using the most familiar multiple communication channels like TV, Radio, Newspapers, Social media, etc to display environmental issues and improve awareness of people. Through them, peoples' environmental responsibility can be improved and enhance their green purchase intention. Many researchers (Meireles, 2018;Abdulsahid et al., 2019) got a positive impact between health consciousness and green purchase intention though some researchers (Michaelidou et al., 2007) concluded that there was no significant impact considering organic products. This study also found there was no positive impact of health consciousness on green purchase intention. Most people were aware of their health some reasons were influenced as income level, profession sector, etc because organic products relatively taken higher price, customers have to pay more money on organic products. In this study, 65% of respondents represented below Rs.55,000 average income level. People cannot buy organic products on their choices if they want to utilize them because the organic products' shops are not spread in the country. Many Sri Lankans consider various factors as a convenience, low price, tasty when they buy products of that quality. Therefore all governments and other organizations try to follow various strategies to introduce these healthy products to the customers. For that, they can follow several steps as spread organic products' shops all over the country, introduce an online purchasing system, provide good quality and tasty products at fair prices, and promote products by using Medias. Research and development are most vital to implement new concepts regarding green products. Therefore organizations have to pay attention to investment regarding new technologies suitable for green products, new products and introduce them with diversification, quality assurance to the consumers. Through these activities, they can minimize environmental issues. By giving awareness about environmental issues such as a decline in natural resources, waste pollution, and noise to the people, they motivate them to purchase green products. Green consumption gives benefits such as improving safety and health for all communities, reduce the use of energy and natural resources by developing new green products or ecofriendly products. Green shopping promotes recycling of waste because using recycled products saving consumers money and contributes to environmental protection.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
When conducting this study there were many limitations. This research mainly focused on Galle District and the sample size was limited to 100 respondents. As well most of the respondents represented in the government sector as 62%. Therefore the findings of this study cannot be generalized for the general population in Sri Lankan context. Therefore it is recommended to future research should expand the sample size by covering all countries and enlarge the scope of the research to get very clear findings.