Research On The Impacts Of Perception Of Environmental Risk On Consumer's Intention To Use The Green Product

In daily life,there is a sort of polluting products,which are common and normal in life(such as plastic bags,paper products),but because of certain properties,in its life cycle including production,being used,and disposal after being used,it generates negative impacts on the environment(such as plastics are difficult to degrade after use,causing soil and water pollution).In contrast,there is a kind of similar product,the green product meeting the same or similar needs,but is more environmentally friendly(such as degradable plastic bags).We define it as green substitute.Whether for social welfare or corporate profitability,both government and enterprises generally hope that consumers can increase consumption of green substitutes which instead consumption of polluting products.While pursuing this goal,governments and businesses ignore a presumption.That is,“Is the pattern of consumer's using polluting products the same as the pattern of using green substitutes?” This thesis proposes that the pattern of using polluting product is different from the pattern of using green substitutes.Specifically,consumers perceive higher environmental risks of polluting products,which induce higher guilty to consumers,and finally reduce consumers' intention to use pollute products,and ultimately there is a decline in the frequency of use of contaminated products.Conversely,consumers believe that the environmental risk of using green substitutes is lower,which induce lower guilt,and leads consumers' higher intention to substitute,and eventually they increase the frequency of using green substitutes.This thesis demonstrates this proposition by experimental methods.In the first experiment,normal plastic bags(i.e.polluting product)and degradable plastic bags(i.e.green substitute)were used as materials;in the second experiment,normal paper towels(i.e.polluting product)and recycled paper towels(i.e.green substitutes)were used as materials.In addition,the green values of consumers were measured.The moderated analysis shows that the pattern that consumers have a higher intention to use green substitute than do polluting product,only shows significant among high-green value consumers,but not in low-green value consumers.In Experiment 3,we chose a restaurant where we used normal paper towels(i.e.polluting product)and recycled paper towels(i.e.green substitute)as experimental materials,conducting a field experiment.The results showed that in the actual consumption environment,consumers use more green substitute than polluting product in total amount.The mainly theoretical contribution is to reveal the difference in the usage pattern between particular green products and their correspondingly green substitutes.Specifically,the lower environmental risk of green substitutes will reduce consumer anticipation of guilt,leading to an increasing of intention to use,and finally they will increase the frequency of using green substitute.In addition,the thesis also found that among consumers with high environmentalists(with high green values),the gap of intention to use polluting product versus green substitute is significant,but among normal consumers(with low green values),there is insignificant in intention to use alternative products.The practical significance of this thesis is to confirm that the expectation of government and enterprises,replacing high environmental risk products through green products,may not be effective as we expected,and further prove that deep reason is the varying intention to use alternative products.