Consumer's intention to purchase green furniture: Do health consciousness and environmental awareness matter?

Abstract

With the increase of consumer's environmental awareness and health consciousness, great attention has been paid to green furniture. This study attempts to explore consumer's intention to purchase green furniture by applying an extension model of theory of planned behavior (TPB). The original TPB model is extended by adding three factors: health consciousness, environmental awareness and willingness to pay for green furniture premium. We collect 460 usable surveys in China. The empirical findings show that environmental awareness positively affects attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control as well as willingness to pay, and then subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and willingness to pay positively influence consumer's intention to purchase green furniture. Health consciousness also positively affects consumer's attitude and intention to purchase green furniture. However, attitude toward purchasing green furniture is not significantly related to purchase intention, which implies an attitude-behavior gap. Furthermore, perceived behavioral control has the largest influence on consumer's purchasing intention, followed by health consciousness, willingness to pay and subjective norm. Additionally, compared with the original TPB model, the extension model of TPB can improve the explained variance. Based on the empirical analysis, we provide some managerial insights for the promotion of green furniture.

Keywords: Environmental awareness; Green furniture; Health consciousness; Theory of planned behavior; Willingness to pay.