Green Awareness and Consumer Purchase Intention of Environmentally-Friendly Electrical Products in Anambra, Nigeria

Abstract

The tremendous increase in demand for consumer goods and services across the world in the last decade has resulted to depletion of natural resources and damage of the environment severely. Evidence in the extant literature have shown relationship between green awareness and green purchase intention but studies on how green awareness influences purchase intention of environmentally-friendly electrical products in a typical developing country context are still lacking. The main objective of this study is to empirically investigate the effect of green awareness on consumers’ purchase intention of environmentally-friendly electrical products. In order to achieve this objective, survey research design was adopted and the population of study comprises post-graduate students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. A sample size of 345 respondents was statistically drawn out from the population size of 2499 students using Taro Yamane’s formula. Stratified random sampling was adopted and the research instrument was a questionnaire. The reliability of the research instrument was tested using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regressions. It was found out that environmental concerns, green social influence and brand strength have positive and statistically significant effect on consumers’ purchase intention of environmentally-friendly electrical products. We conclude that this study provides empirical evidence that green awareness has a positive and significant effect on consumers’ purchase intention of environmentally-friendly electrical products. We recommend that government through her regulatory agencies should enforce laws and guidelines that will educate and influence public awareness on the need to act pro-environmentally, also marketers should promote environmentally-friendly products by encouraging consumers to prefer products that safeguard their environment through the use of peer groups, reference groups and social media.

Keywords: *Green Awareness, *Consumer Purchase Intention, *Environmentally-Friendly Electrical Products, *Environmental Concern, *Green Social Influence, *Brand Strength, *Green Regulations and Guidelines, *Post-graduate Students, *Awka, Nigeria.