The Composition Of Taoist Consumption Ethics Beliefs And Its Influence On Sustainable Consumption Decision-making

In China,consumers,one of major participants in business transaction,have been constantly changing their consumption conceptions and consumption ways with social development and economic growth.As an example of change against the current situation that unsustainable consumption behaviors are flushing,sustainable consumption not only refers to the sustainability of consumer products and services,but also to the sustainability of consumer behavior itself.The collision of values from different culture and institutional backgrounds has become increasingly fierce in such market with expanding consumption scale.The local consumers have to face serious moral differentiation and multiple ethical standards,especially under the complex consumption ethics situation,and resultantly suffer from some social problems such as materialism,consumption alienation and excessive consumption.Such circumstance in incompatible with our medium and long-term goal of sustainable development,also incompatible with Taoist consumption ethics which emphasizes sustainability.However,the role of Taoist consumer ethical beliefs(TCEB)in the decision-making of sustainable consumer behavior,is still remain no revealed.In this study,several methods like literature review,in-depth interview and questionnaire survey are used to explore the following core issues:(1)the connotation and measurement of TCEB;(2)The composition and measurement of sustainable consumption behavior;(3)The effect of TCEB and its subdivision dimensions in the decision-making of sustainable consumption behavior;(4)The mediating effect of moral identity in the process that TCEB and its subdivision dimension impacting the intention of sustainable consumption;(5)The moderating effect of price sensitivity and information reliability in the process.It results that:(1)TCEB includes five dimensions,harmonious cognition,less selfish desire,the kindness like water,plain embrace and letting nature take its course;(2)Sustainable consumption behavior includes six dimensions,poverty alleviation consumption,social responsibility,saving food,green purchase,environmental friendliness and resource conservation;(3)TCEB positively influences the sustainable consumption intention;(4)Moral identity plays a partial mediating role between TCEB and sustainable consumption behavioral intention,that is,TCEB can promote the sustainable consumption behavior intention by increasing the level of consumers’ moral identity;(5)Price sensitivity and information reliability play a moderating role in the influence of TCEB on the sustainable consumption intention.Specifically,price sensitivity and information reliability can negatively moderate the effect of TCEB and moral identity to promote sustainable consumption intention.The above conclusions reveal the mechanism of TCEB to affect decision-making of consumers’ sustainable consumption behavior,which further enriches the finding for the indigenous research on consumer ethics,as well as provides a new perspective and basic tool for empirical research on Taoist traditional consumer culture.