What is it about?
This article explores why people say they care about the environment but often don’t act on it when shopping. It looks at what influences people to buy eco-friendly products, such as personal values, social pressure, and feelings of control. The study uses surveys and advanced analysis to find which factors are essential and which are just helpful. It also examines how age changes these patterns.
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Why is it important?
Understanding what truly drives green buying helps businesses and policymakers close the gap between good intentions and real action. If companies know which values matter most, they can design better campaigns and products. This research also shows that some factors, like feeling capable of buying green, are essential even if they don’t directly cause action. These insights can make sustainability efforts more effective and targeted.
Perspectives
What excites me most is how we moved beyond traditional models to tackle the persistent “attitude–behavior gap” in sustainable consumption. While many studies rely solely on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we introduced green consumption values and prosocial attitudes to capture deeper motivations, and then combined Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). This dual-method approach is rarely applied in sustainability research, allowing us to identify not only what drives green buying but also what is essential for it to occur. Our findings challenge long-held assumptions: perceived behavioral control, often seen as a strong predictor, showed no direct effect, yet emerged as a necessary condition at certain thresholds. We also uncovered a logarithmic relationship between green values and behavior, revealing diminishing returns at higher value levels, something often overlooked in linear models.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gökhan Aydin
University of Brighton
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Thresholds of Sustainability: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Green Buying Behavior, Sustainability, May 2025, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/su17114965.
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