Green Attitudes and Behavior Gap: Obstruction to Be Green

Abstract

Understanding green consumption behavior is critical for any marketer and it is clear that there are many different motives drive for green consumer behavior. However, the higher levels of public awareness of environmental concerns do not directly translate into actual buying and consumption in regard to environmental friendly products and services. The emerging picture of green consumption behavior is a process that is strongly influenced by consumer attitudes, but demands for green products have been remained controversial, complex, and vary in different cultural contexts. This study examines the attitudes and obstacles of being green from the Sri Lankan consumers' perspective. The objective of the study is to investigate from the motivational aspect of how individual values, behavior specific beliefs and moral norms affect attitudes and intention towards green consumption behavior in a developing country perspective and to explore the some insights into why there is an attitude-behavior gap and examines the obstacles to being green in the Sri Lankan culture specific. Then the research is used 'interpretive mixed-method' research approach in order to strategically achieve this research objective. A survey strategy has been subjected to test attitude-behavior relationships and then the 'thematic analysis' followed by in-depth interviews to justify its significance in capturing uncovered reality. The findings emerged the several important themes from the study: green means practice of Buddhist Philosophy or religious teaching: green is government responsibility; green is doubt and not for everybody; personal commitments restrict to be green. This research would be directly significant and benefited to government policy designers and marketers in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries as well.