1. Introduction
The impact of industrial activities on the Earth’s environment intensified in the 1970s, and the serious pollution eventually stimulated environmental movements throughout the world. People became increasingly conscious of the importance of the environment, and the United Nations General Assembly established the first United Nations Environment Program (UNPE) in 1972. The primary goal of the UNPE is to manage environmental movements by various United Nations agencies, develop pollution prevention measures, and protect the planet from pollution. As a result, the concept of green environmental management began to gain popularity. At the same time, businesses were motivated to take on more social responsibility and to adopt green marketing strategies as their operational philosophy by thoroughly transforming their traditional business marketing strategies [
1].
As the green movements become more prevalent, consumers will eventually change their purchase behaviors and become more receptive to green products [
2]. Today, the number of environmentally conscious consumers has grown, and customers are realizing the direct and significant impact of their purchase behaviors on the environment. Environmental issues are taken into their purchase consideration to contribute to the global environment. More consumers are willing to purchase green products even if the price of the green products is higher [
3].
The development of green production and consumption is a global trend. For sustainable development of the Earth, we must strive to change traditional production and consumption practices. For several decades, with increasing green awareness, Taiwan has promoted green movements. In addition, there are more green products available in Taiwan. However, a significant number of consumers distrust green products, and are wary of the environmental functionality of a particular brand or company.
Customer perceived quality and satisfaction are reflected in customer trust and loyalty [
4]. Consumers develop emotional responses to a product or service through their purchase experience, and their pleasure toward that product or service is an indication of their satisfaction [
5]. Moreover, customers who are more satisfied with a product are more willing to establish a long-term relationship with the seller [
6]. Literature on marketing has shown that satisfaction is an antecedent of trust. In addition, cognitive perception of product quality is an attribute of product or brand perception, but consumers often lack sufficient information about the sellers. Therefore, how to create customer trust toward a product or brand is a pressing market issue [
7]. When customer satisfaction toward a product or service is greater than customer expectation, the customer might continue purchasing the product and recommend the product to others [
8].
Based on the above research background and motivation, this study examines how the degree of environmental friendliness of green products, green satisfaction, and green perceived quality impact green trust. The research objectives are listed as follows:
- (1)
Exploring the impact of environmental friendliness on green satisfaction, green perceived quality and green trust.
- (2)
Discussing the impacts of green perceived quality and green satisfaction on green trust.
- (3)
Investigating whether green perceived quality and green satisfaction mediate the relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust.
5. Conclusions and Implications
Promoting the trend of green marketing, this research explores the direct and indirect influences of environmental friendliness on green trust. Empirical results support the seven hypotheses. Previous research has not addressed how to generate green trust in the context of today’s popular green trend. This study therefore generates a research model to discuss the influence of environmental friendliness on green trust and to investigate the mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality. In other words, this study proposes the increase of environmental friendliness as a way to enhance green trust via the two mediators, green satisfaction and green perceived quality. The results indicate that environmental friendliness positively relates to green trust. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that green perceived quality and green satisfaction are two partial mediators on the negative relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust. In addition, the results indicate that environmental friendliness is positively associated with green satisfaction and green perceived quality, which are positively associated with green trust. All hypotheses proposed in this study are supported. This study suggests that firms should increase their products’ environmental friendliness to enhance their consumers’ green trust. Furthermore, if companies would like to increase their customers’ green trust, they have to improve their customers’ green perceived quality and green satisfaction.
This research points out that environmental friendliness of a product has three approaches to positively influence its green trust. The first approach is that environmental friendliness of a product can positively affect its green trust directly. The second approach is that environmental friendliness of a product can positively influence its green trust indirectly via its green satisfaction. The third approach is that environmental friendliness of a product can positively affect its green trust indirectly via its green perceived quality. Companies should raise environmental friendliness of their products such that green marketing could become mainstream and successfully penetrate the market such that they can enhance the sales and market shares of their products. The major purpose of this study is to discuss the relationship between environmental friendliness of a product and its green trust and to investigate the partial mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Companies have to increase environmental friendliness of their products and raise green satisfaction and green perceived quality of their products to increase green trust of their products. It is therefore beneficial for firms to develop strategies for increasing environmental friendliness of their products and raising green perceived quality and green satisfaction of their products in order to increase green trust of their products to create a longer-term relationship in the environmental era. Since firms have finite resources, they should well deploy their resources to enhance three positive determinants of green trust: environmental friendliness, green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Hence, companies should utilize every chance to raise environmental friendliness of their products and enhance green perceived quality and green satisfaction of their products.
There are four theoretical contributions in this paper. Firstly, this paper combines the ideas of perceived quality and satisfaction to extend the research on green marketing and to build up green trust from the increase of environmental friendliness, green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Secondly, there is no prior research discussing the relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust. This study proves that environmental friendliness positively affects green trust to fill the research gap. Thirdly, this study indicates that the relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust is partially mediated by green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Fourthly, raising environmental friendliness, green satisfaction and green perceived quality can help firms to increase their customers’ green trust. This research extends the research of perceived quality, satisfaction, and trust into the field of green marketing.
There are four practical contributions in this study. Firstly, this study verifies that increasing environmental friendliness of a product cannot only raise its green satisfaction and green perceived quality, but also enhance its green trust. If companies would like to improve their consumers’ green trust for their products, they have to enhance their products’ environmental friendliness, green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Secondly, in a more complex marketing environment, consumers play a role of an effective information channel to build up trust in the market. Thus, firms need to increase green satisfaction and green perceived quality in order to enhance green trust. Thirdly, firms should raise green satisfaction and green perceived quality of their products. Because there are significant mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality in this study, companies can enhance green satisfaction and green perceived quality of their products to improve their green trust. Fourthly, this paper demonstrates that environmental friendliness of a product is positively associated with green satisfaction and green perceived quality that are positively associated with green trust. Environmental friendliness of a product does not only positively influence green trust directly, but also positively affects it via green satisfaction and green perceived quality indirectly.
This study explores the influence of environmental friendliness on green trust and discusses the mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality. Chen and Chang [
30] explore the influence of “greenwash” on green trust and to investigate the mediation effects of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. In contrast to Chen and Chang [
30], who indicate that greenwash is a negative determinant of green trust, this study demonstrates that environmental friendliness is a positive determinant of green trust. Chen and Chang [
25] discuss the influences of green perceived quality and green perceived risk on green trust and investigate the mediation effect of green satisfaction. Whereas Chen and Chang [
25] indicate that green perceived risk is a negative determinant of green trust, this study demonstrates that environmental friendliness is a positive determinant of green trust. Chen and Chang [
25] also point out that green perceived quality is a positive determinant of green trust, though this research proves that green perceived quality is a mediator between environmental friendliness and green trust. On the other hand, this study also reveals that green satisfaction positively affects green trust, a result supported by Chen and Chang [
25]. Moreover, this study also demonstrates that green perceived quality positively affects green trust. This result is also supported by Chen and Chang [
25].
In order to increase the environmental friendliness of a product, firms should determine the sources of environmental friendliness of a product and develop them to subsequently increase green satisfaction and green perceived quality and further enhance green trust. In terms of future research, this study provides the following four directions. First, because this research concentrates on green products future research can examine the purchase of general products for a comparison with this study. Second, since this study is undertaken in Taiwan, future research can focus on other countries to see how results compare or vary. Third, this study adopts an empirical research by means of a questionnaire survey that only provides cross-sectional data; future research can therefore look toward a longitudinal study to uncover the differences of environmental friendliness, green satisfaction, green perceived quality, and green trust in the different stages of the environmental regulations in the world. Fourth, although price is a very sensitive and contributing factor to green consumers, it is not explored in this study. We recommend that future research consider the price factor in the research model. Finally, we hope that the research findings are beneficial to researchers, managers, policy makers, and practitioners, and contribute to future research as reference.