Determinants That Influence Green Product Purchase Intention and Behavior: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I thank the authors for the revised version of the paper and for the changes made. I think that the 19 papers listed in the Appendix A should be incorporated in the reference section. As a result of this incorporation, all the numbers of the papers should be changed accordingly in the other tables in the paper (e.g. table 2).
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
This paper focuses on the determinants that inflfuence green product purchase intentions using a critical literature review.
This study is well organized and written in English. However, there are some minor weaknesses that must be corrected bofore the acceptance.
- In the section of Introduction, the authors fail to address why the literature review on green product purchase intentions is essential. In addition, I am not sure about the main contributions. Probably, contributions should be linked to differences from the literature.
- The current reviews focus on indexed and peer-reviewed academic journals (n=197). If possible, I recommend that the authors could reduce the number of articles. Alternatively, just focus on key articles that have been published at th leading (ot top) journals.
- Table 2 is too long. A compact presentation is valuable.
- Conclusions should be presented in the last section.
Author Response
Dear Professor, Please see the attachment. Thank you very much.
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Reviewer 3 Report
The study “ Determinants that Influence the Green Product Purchase Intention and Behaviour: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework” presents a very interesting topic.
Comments:
The paper describes previous theoretical and empirical research and their contribution on the topic. The authors emphasize the contribution of this research on the topic.
Materials and Methods are well presented. The conclusion is clear.
It was a pleasure to read your article.
Author Response
Dear Professor, Please see the attachment. Thank you very much.
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This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I found the paper interesting and needed in the context of an increase interest in the literature related to the adoption of the eco-friendly products. Overall, I think that the research is interesting and the selected papers have been reviewed in depth. With all these, some improvements are needed prior to publishing. Please consider the following issues to be addressed in the paper:
- Please add a short roadmap at the end of introduction in which you briefly present the main sections of the paper;
- Please better explain how the exclusion has been made in each of the three steps presented in Figure 1;
- Please expand the research by including other words such as: "eco-friendly products" and "green products" which might have eliminated some papers from the research;
- Please add a section in which you discuss the countries on which these studies have been conducted on and try to select papers that cover a large geographic area, which might give some "hints" related to the type of variables the researches have included in their study. Please add a discussion related to the connection between the variables influence and the geographical area of the studies.
- Please check English and spelling (e.g. page 26, row 625).
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Review: sustainability-1081389
Determinants that influence the green product purchase intentions and behaviour: A literature review and guiding framework
Based on 95 studies published in the SCOPUS database between January 2015 and July 2020, this study aims to review empirical evidence on the determinants of green purchase intentions and green purchase behavior. Moreover, the authors aim to identify explanations for the attitude-behavior gap, which is often discussed in the context of sustainable purchase decisions.
The authors’ analysis reveals 218 determinants of green purchase intentions and 169 determinants of green purchase behavior, which the authors divide into five broad categories. The authors argue that their findings reveal the main determinants of green purchase intentions and green purchase behavior, respectively, and thus help policymakers and practitioners to mobilize consumers for green consumption.
While such a topic is within the scope of Sustainability and should be interesting for its readers, I am unsure if the paper’s contribution is sufficient. Moreover, I have several comments on the analysis. In the following, I explain these issues in detail.
Key issue 1: Contribution and purpose of this study need to be clarified
a) The authors argue that they are not aware of any review on this topic after the year 2014. This brings me to two points: i) After a quick search I found the reviews by ElHaffar et al. (2020) and Testa et al. (2020) both considering similar topics. Consequently, the authors need to carefully search for other overview articles on this topic and explain how their own study can add new information to the academic discussion. ii) Relatedly, the authors do not embed their study in existing studies prior to 2014. While they mention the studies by Butterfield and O’Fallon (2005) or Joshi and Rahman (2015), they do not explain (and indeed it is not clear) how their own study adds additional insights on this topic. Moreover, there are further studies, e.g. Peattie (2010), which should be discussed in this context. Overall, it is thus not clear how the authors can contribute to the existing literature.
b) The authors further argue that their findings are relevant for policymakers and manufacturers. However, the authors are very vague in their statements. For example, they just broadly argue that ecological education is necessary to promote green consumption. Given the many different determinants identified in the analysis, the authors could be way more precise in their proposals. Further, the authors should also discuss the consequences for empirical researchers. For instance, do the authors advise that all determinants should be included as explanatory variables in future analysis and econometric models?
Key issue 2: Selection of studies and analysis need to be revised
a) Although the authors describe their selection criteria in detail, I am wondering whether they might have overlooked important studies. For instance, I am missing studies from relevant journals in this field (e.g. Ecological Economics), which should be part of the SCOPUS database. After a quick search I found several obviously relevant articles, which all have been published between 2015 and 2020 such as Stadelmann and Schubert (2018) on energy labels and household appliances or Schill et al. (2019) on intentions to purchase smart home objects. Hence, I guess that there are many more relevant articles published in this time period, which have not been included in this review.
b) So far, it is not apparent to the reader to what extent the selected studies are comparable. That is, it is also not clear, for example, whether some determinants are more important for certain behaviors or products than for others. Therefore, the overview presented in Table 1 is not very helpful. It would be better to report an overview of the studies in terms of countries, behaviors / products, populations / target groups, type of data (e.g. survey data, scanner data, etc.), stated vs revealed data, dependent variables, etc.
c) Similarly, the overview in Table 2 is rather confusing. Many terms are mentioned twice or more often (e.g. attitudes). The labels of the variables are also not self-explanatory for the reader. Moreover, this overview does not distinguish between green purchase intentions and green purchase behavior. Hence, the reader cannot easily see whether some factors are more important for specific behavior or intentions. Given that this type of analysis does not allow to derive statements about the relative relevance of the different determinants, I further cannot see how the authors can come to their conclusions about the major drivers of green purchase intentions or green purchase behavior (e.g. lines 893-897). For example, they argue that green washing is a major driver, but there is only one study considering this factor.
d) It is further unclear how the authors defined the five broad categories. Relatedly, the assignment of the different determinants to the five categories seems to be rather arbitrary in many cases (e.g. Why is self-image no motivation?, Why is “green perceived value” no perceived factor?, and many more).
e) Concerning the description of the different factors, it also not obvious why the authors often refer to studies published before 2015 (e.g. line 210 or lines 239-240, but there are many more), and therefore studies that are not presented in Table 1.
Minor issues:
a) In their motivation, in the authors use several arguments that are based on rather outdated references and facts. See e.g. lines 78-82: “[…] regardless of natural concern and inspirational demeanor of clients towards sustainability and eco-friendly items, market share of eco-friendly items stays restricted to only 1-3% of the whole market [14]. This recommends that natural considerations assume a minor job in purchaser buying choices, and individuals for the most part ignore ecological effects of their purchases [15].” Here, reference [14] is from 2011 and reference [15] from 2001. The same applies to further references (e.g. [17]). Consequently, the authors need to include more recent references to strengthen their argumention and motivation.
b) The authors use the term “independent variable”. I suggest to use the term “explanatory variables” instead, as the other term implies very strong assumptions.
c) Line 140: What bias do the authors refer to?
References:
ElHaffar, G., F. Durif, and L. Dubé (2020), Towards closing the attitude-intention-behavior gap in green consumption: A narrative review of the literature and an overview of future research directions, Journal of Cleaner Production 275, 122556.
Peattie, K. (2010), Green consumption: Behavior and norms, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35, 195-228.
Schill, M., D. Godegroit-Winkel, M. Fall Diallo, and C. Barbarossa (2019), Consumers’ intentions to purchase smart home objects: Do environmental issues matter?, Ecological Economics 161, 176-185.
Stadelmann, M. and R. Schubert (2018), How do different designs of energy labels influence purchases of household appliance? A field study in Switzerland, Ecological Economics 144, 112-123.
Testa, F., G. Pretner, R. Iovino, G. Bianchi, S. Tessitore, and F. Iraldo (2020), Drives of green consumption: a systematic review, Environment, Development and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00844-5.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the revised version of the paper. Even thought the authors have answered to the previous comments, the way the comments have been addressed is not matching my expectations. For example, I have asked the authors to discuss the reasons behind the exclusion criteria they have used, which for me are not clear (e.g. why this exclusion criterion is used: All papers published before January 2015 or after July 2020"? - if no particular reason is stated maybe the authors can use January 2015 - January 2021). The new added words related to study on countries is trivial: this is only briefly discussed in few phrases and no information can be easily extracted from here by the reader. Also, I believe that there are a series of papers not cited in the paper which match the criteria state by the authors as the selected countries are restricted to few areas. Please revise. Last, from page 6 to page 19 there are only tables - this is not something usual in a research/review paper. Please put all the information in one table which contains multiple columns and try to eliminate all those tables. Please add discussions in connection to the papers you have reviewed. After all, it is a review paper.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
I reviewed the paper based on my comments from the first round. The authors addressed some of my points and, for example, adjusted the tables, updated the references used in their motivation, and have made an attempt to better relate the paper to existing reviews as well as derive policy recommendations.
By doing so, it becomes even more obvious that this study cannot make any significant contribution to the discussion on the determinants of green purchase intentions or green purchase behavior. Just stating that all studies prior to 2015 are outdated and to state that current reviews do not consider studies from the years 2019 and 2020 is not convincing. In addition, the methodological approach still does not allow to distinguish between very and less relevant factors and is very subjective (“[w]hen considering positive determinants, the factors which were recorded more than four times are considered as major drivers of both the GPI and GPB”). Moreover, all policy recommendations are still very vague, well-known (i.e., the disclosure of more information could help consumers to make better decisions), and even strange. For example, the authors recommend that governments “have to establish a regulatory body to decide the nominal and affordable prices for the eco-friendly products”, which has little to do with the realities and market systems in the world. The recommendation to conduct more research on eco-labels underscores the perception that the authors do not take into account many studies, especially from the field of environmental economics (indeed, they now consider studies from the journal “Ecological Economics”, but there are many more journals in this field, which are neglected). Concerning recommendations for research they also do not address my question on how to consider all these factors on econometric analyses or models.
Author Response
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Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
I thank the authors for the revised version of the paper. Even though the period for which the analysis has been extended, I believe that the search made by the authors include only a part of the papers in the mentioned period. there are paper which I have read for writing literature review, some of the published at MDPI, which are missing form the paper. More important, the paper still has a great amount of pages (from 5 to16) which contains only tables, which is not a common practice in the field (I have mentioned this even in my previous comments to the authors). As mentioned before, the structure of the paper is complicated and it is hard, even reading the paper from top to bottom, to make an impression over the field. I believe that the paper is more a collection to references to other papers from the field, than a review paper as it is intended. I am sorry for this.
