Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting young consumers’ purchase intention
of green products in Sri Lanka, due to the lack of studies that deliberate green issues in the Sri Lankan
context though environmental disputes increasingly affect every side of human life. Moreover, based
on the prior researches, this study focuses on three variables that influence on young consumers’
purchase intention of green products such as environmental attitude, environmental knowledge and
social influence. Three hypotheses were developed based on the constructed conceptual framework
derived from the marketing and consumer behavior literature. The data were collected over a survey
technique by conveniently administering structured questionnaires from 150 young consumers in Sri
Lanka. First, the analysis was carried out the factor analysis to explore the significance of influencing
factors of young consumers’ purchase intention, and multiple regression analysis was performed to
explore the factors that influence on young consumers’ purchase intention of green products. The
results of the regression analysis indicated that all three variables (i.e., environmental attitude,
environmental knowledge and social influence) have a significant and positive impact on young
consumers’ purchase intention of green products in Sri Lanka. Moreover, it suggested that the
environmental attitude variable was the most significant while social influence was the less
significant variables towards young consumers’ purchase intention. The findings of this study
provide new insights to marketers to formulate appropriate strategies for promoting green purchase
behavior among young consumers in Sri Lanka. Moreover, the study unveiled that marketers need to
understand the path that moves the environmental factors to green purchase intention to successfully
enhance and redefine the new target markets. The most significant precursor which affects the green
purchase intention of Sri Lankan young consumers is environmental attitude followed by
environmental knowledge and social influence. But, this study evaluates the construct of purchase
intention as an expressed intention for green products based on cross-sectional approach rather than
actual purchase for such products. Hence, future scholars should adopt a longitudinal approach in
their studies by focusing on changes in consumers purchase intention.
