Research On The Impact Mechanism Of Corporate Environmental Behavior On Consumer Response From The Perspective Of Green Marketing

Environmental problems such as frequent smog,soil erosion,serious freshwater pollution,land desertification,and sharp decline in biodiversity caused by the rapid economic development in our country have drawn attention to the whole society.Facing the increasingly serious ecological and environmental problems,enterprises which account for more than 70% of environmental pollution have become the focus of the whole society.Meanwhile,the vigorous promotion of the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful China not only awaken people's awareness of environmental protection but also led to their increasing expectations for companies to consciously take environmental protection responsibility.Under such circumstance,a series of corporate environmental behaviors for the purpose of saving natural resources,alleviating environmental degradation and caring for nature have become an important means for them to occupy green market share,establish a positive image,obtain positive social reputation and finally promote economic efficiency as well as comprehensive competitiveness.Corporate environmental behavior is one of the core content of ecological economics,organizational behavior and other research fields.Mosy scholars have explored the decision-making evolution mechanism of corporate environmental behavior based on model deduction and mathematical analysis,and the impact of corporate environmental behavior on corporate environmental performance and long-term financial performance.Few studies have focused on the differentiated responses of consumers,the most important stakeholders of companies,to different types of corporate environmental behaviors.In fact,as an important component of green marketing strategies,corporate environmental behavior is not only an essential manifestation of the implementation of corporate's green development principles and environmental protection responsibility,which affect corporate's social reputation.It is also an important way to maintain a high-quality relationship with consumers,which will exert great influence on the consumer's decision-making process.In view of the insufficiency of existing research,this study will focus on consumers' psychological decision-making process of corporate environmental behaviors from the perspective of green marketing,and deeply discuss the impact mechanism of corporate environmental behaviors on consumer response.This research takes the research perspective of green marketing,divides corporate environmental behavior into two categories: substantive environmental behaviors and symbolic environmental behaviors.Substantial environmental behaviors refer to those corporate behavior in relation to corporate's main business.Substantial environmental behaviors can significantly improve or enhance corporate environmental performance,which includes product-driven environmental behaviors,manufacturing process-driven environmental behaviors,pollution prevention behaviors or other environmental innovation-related behaviors.Symbolic environmental behaviors refer to those environmental behaviors that can relieve system pressure,obtain environmental legitimacy and establish or maintain environmental images.Symbolic environmental behaviors include cooperating with various environmental protection enterprises,participating in environmental public welfare publicity activities,applying for green trademarks,establishing environmental management committees,and adopting of green compensation policies.This study introduces two psychological variables,perceived sincerity of motives,greenwash perception,which can effectively reflect consumers' perceptions of corporate behavior motivation and also introduces thinking mindset,which can reflect the consumer's information processing mode to establish a theoretical model.The model takes corporate environmental behavior as the independent variable,perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception as the mediating variables,consumer mindset as the moderating variable and consumer response as the dependent variable,conducting a theoretical model to explain the effect of corporate environmental behavior on consumer response and propose relevant research hypotheses.Through four setting experiments,this study investigates consumers' diverse response towards substantive environmental behaviors and symbolic environmental behaviors.The results reveal the difference of consumer's attitude towards corporation,purchasing intention and word-of-mouth intention in face of two types of corporate environmental behaviors,the mediating role of the perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception in the effects of corporate environmental behavior on consumer response;the moderating role of consumer mindset in the effects of corporate environmental behavior on consumer's perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception,and the moderated mediating role of perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception.This study examines the direct impact of corporate environmental behavior on consumer response through Experiment 1,the results show that consumers exert more positive corporate attitude,product purchasing intentions and word-of-mouth intention towards substantial environmental behaviors than symbolic environmental behaviors.Experiment 2 examines the above conclusions by replacing the participants and experimental materials and further finds that,compared with symbolic environmental behaviors,substantial environmental behaviors are more likely to stimulate consumers' perceived sincerity of motives;compared with substantial environmental behaviors,symbolic environmental behaviors are more likely to stimulate consumers' greenwash perception.Perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception play mediating roles in the relationship between corporate environmental behaviors and consumer responses.Experiment 3 changes the experimental materials and participants again,which aims to examine the moderating role of consumers' thinking mindset in the relationship between corporate environmental behavior and perceived sincerity of motives as well as greenwash perception.The results show that under the global thinking mindset,there shows no difference between consumers perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception when facing substantive environmental behavior and symbolic environmental behavior.Under local thinking mindset,consumers are more likely to have generated perceived sincerity of motives towards substantive environmental behavior and greenwash perception towards symbolic environmental behavior.Experiment 4 re-examines all the above conclusions by replacing participants.The purpose is to improve the generalizability of the experimental results.In addition,the results of Experiment 4 further show that the thinking mindset will moderate the influence of corporate environmental behavior on the perceived sincerity of motives and greenwash perception,and then have an impact on consumer response.This research firstly takes green marketing as the research perspective to examine consumers' response mechanism towards corporate environmental behavior.This is not only a supplement and development of corporate environmental behavior research from a theoretical perspective,but also provides a new strategic choice for Chinese companies to implement green marketing strategies.This research has uncovers and examines the mediating mechanism in the relationship between corporate environmental behaviors and consumer response,which constructs the psychological influence mechanism of substantive environmental behavior and symbolic environmental behaviors on consumers' response.In addition,this study explores and verifies the moderating role of thinking mindset in the influence of corporate environmental behavior on consumer response,and clarifies the boundary conditions of two types of corporate environmental behavior,especially the substantial environmental behavior to promote consumer response.Managerially,this research has important reference value for companies to effectively implement environmental behaviors and green marketing strategies to win green competitive advantages.Specifically,companies should focus on substantive environmental behaviors,supplement with symbolic environmental behaviors,and pay much attention to consumers' cognition and judgment of corporate environmental behavior motivation.Meanwhile,enterprises should give full consideration to the differences between consumers' goal processing mindset and local processing mindset,and formulate targeted corporate environmental behavior strategies so as to promote consumers' perceived sincerity of motives,decrease greenwash perception and finally enhance consumer response.