Literature Review – Green Consumer Behaviour and Purchase Intention

Introduction

Australian consumers express strong environmental concern yet buy sustainable products far less often than their stated attitudes would predict. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that most households undertake routine pro-environmental actions such as recycling and reducing energy use, while comparatively few weigh environmental impact when making significant purchases (ABS 2022). This divergence between favourable attitudes and actual market behaviour, commonly termed the green attitude-behaviour or intention-action gap, is the organising problem in the study of green consumer behaviour. Understanding why professed values translate so unevenly into purchase intention, and why intention in turn translates so unevenly into purchase, matters for marketers seeking durable green segments and for regulators such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which now polices the environmental claims that shape those decisions.

This review synthesises the marketing, consumer psychology and environmental behaviour literature published between 2000 and 2024, anchored by foundational theoretical work. Sources were identified through Business Source Complete, Scopus and Google Scholar using combinations of the terms green, sustainable, ethical, pro-environmental, purchase intention, willingness to pay and attitude-behaviour gap, with priority given to high-impact reviews, frequently cited empirical studies, and Australian regulatory and market sources. Figure 1 maps the principal antecedents of green purchase intention that organise the review. Six themes are examined in turn: the attitude-behaviour gap; values, norms and behavioural intention; greenwashing and trust; willingness to pay a green premium; segmentation of the green consumer; and nudges, defaults and choice architecture. A synthesis of the evidence and its gaps follows, before the review draws implications for Australian marketers and policy.

The Attitude-Behaviour (Intention-Action) Gap

The point of departure for green consumer research is the repeated finding that environmental attitudes are weak predictors of purchasing. Vermeir and Verbeke (2006) surveyed Belgian consumers of sustainable food and found that generally positive attitudes coexisted with modest intentions to buy, with the gap widening where consumers doubted product availability, felt little personal involvement, or lacked confidence that their choice would make a difference. Perceived consumer effectiveness, involvement and certainty, rather than attitude strength alone, distinguished intenders from non-intenders. The gap persists one step further along the causal chain. Carrington, Neville and Whitwell (2010), writing from the University of Melbourne, argued that even sincere ethical intentions frequently fail to produce ethical purchases, and located the missing links in implementation intentions, actual behavioural control and the situational context of the shopping trip rather than in insincerity.

The gap is therefore better read as situational than as hypocrisy. Favourable attitudes are cheap to hold and easily crowded out at the point of sale by price premiums, limited availability, entrenched habit and competing priorities such as convenience and performance. White, Habib and Hardisty (2019), in an influential Journal of Marketing review, concluded that the most reliable route to sustainable behaviour is not stronger persuasion but the removal of friction so that the green option becomes the easy option. This reframing, from changing minds to changing choice environments, recurs throughout the themes below and is especially relevant in the Australian retail setting, where sustainable lines still contend with shelf-space and price disadvantages against established substitutes.

Values, Norms and Behavioural Intention

The Theory of Planned Behaviour

The dominant deliberative account of green purchase intention is the theory of planned behaviour, in which intention is formed by attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, and intention in turn predicts behaviour (Ajzen 1991). Applied to green consumption, the model is routinely extended with environmental concern, moral obligation and past behaviour, and these additions typically improve its explanatory power. The theory’s own logic, however, anticipates the attitude-behaviour gap: perceived behavioural control captures the very constraints, such as affordability and availability, that sever intention from action, and the intention-behaviour path is consistently the weakest link in green applications of the model. The theory of planned behaviour thus explains the formation of intention well while conceding that intention is an imperfect proxy for purchase.

Value-Belief-Norm Theory

Where the theory of planned behaviour is broadly self-interested and calculative, value-belief-norm theory is normative and moral. Stern (2000) proposed a causal chain running from relatively stable values, particularly biospheric and altruistic values, through an ecological worldview and awareness of adverse consequences to an ascription of personal responsibility that activates personal norms, which then drive behaviour. The framework predicts environmentally significant behaviour most strongly when the behaviour is low in cost and effort, such as recycling or petition-signing, and more weakly for costly market behaviours where financial and convenience considerations intrude. Read together, the two theories are complementary: value-belief-norm theory explains why environmental concern is widespread and genuine, while the theory of planned behaviour explains why that concern is throttled at the checkout by control and normative pressures that vary from purchase to purchase.

Greenwashing and Consumer Trust

If credible information linked attitudes cleanly to products, the gap would narrow; greenwashing ensures it does not. Greenwashing, the practice of conveying a misleading impression of environmental responsibility, corrodes the trust on which green purchase intention depends. Experimental evidence from Nyilasy, Gangadharbatla and Paladino (2014) shows the mechanism is not merely neutralising but counterproductive: when green advertising is paired with poor underlying environmental performance, consumers infer greenwashing and their brand attitudes and purchase intentions fall below those of firms that make no green claim at all. Scepticism, moreover, generalises. Once consumers are burned, distrust spreads across categories and undermines honest claimants, a market-for-lemons dynamic in which unverifiable virtue is discounted wholesale.

The Australian evidence indicates the problem is widespread rather than exceptional. An internet sweep by the ACCC found that more than half of the businesses reviewed had made concerning or potentially misleading environmental claims, prompting updated guidance on the standards expected under the Australian Consumer Law (ACCC 2023). Independent scrutiny reinforces the regulator: the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility has publicly challenged the environmental and climate claims of major listed companies, sharpening investor and consumer awareness that marketing rhetoric may outrun substance (ACCR 2023). For trust to support purchase intention, claims must therefore be specific, substantiated and, ideally, verified by an independent third party rather than merely asserted by the seller.

Willingness to Pay a Green Premium

Sustainable products commonly carry a price premium, so willingness to pay is pivotal to whether intention survives contact with the shelf. Laroche, Bergeron and Barbaro-Forleo (2001) profiled consumers prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products and found the willing segment better identified by attitudes, values and perceived consumer effectiveness than by demographics alone. Stated willingness to pay, however, systematically overstates behaviour: hypothetical survey premiums exceed the sums consumers actually surrender in the market, a manifestation of the same intention-action gap in monetary form. The premium is also motivationally fragile. Griskevicius, Tybur and Van den Bergh (2010) demonstrated that activating status motives increased the choice of green products, but only when consumption was public and the green option was more expensive, consistent with a costly-signalling or competitive-altruism account. Willingness to pay is consequently neither uniform nor stable; it is concentrated in particular consumers and amplified in particular, visible contexts, which helps explain why aggregate green premiums prove elusive when purchases are private and price-salient.

Segmenting the Green Consumer

The green market is not monolithic, and effective analysis begins by segmenting it. A recurring picture distinguishes a committed minority of highly motivated consumers, often grouped under the label of lifestyles of health and sustainability, from a much larger group of occasional or aspirational greens whose behaviour is contingent on price, convenience and social cues. Roy Morgan segmentation of Australian consumers identifies precisely this structure, a dedicated environmentally driven core alongside a broad, wavering middle (Roy Morgan 2023). Population data are consistent with the pattern: the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that routine, low-cost actions such as recycling are near-universal while environmentally motivated major purchases remain a minority practice (ABS 2022). For targeting, attitudinal and value-based variables outperform crude demographics, as the willingness-to-pay evidence already implied (Laroche, Bergeron & Barbaro-Forleo 2001), and White, Habib and Hardisty (2019) caution that messages effective for the committed core, which stress sacrifice and moral duty, can alienate the mainstream, for whom quality, savings and social norms are more persuasive.

Nudges, Defaults and Choice Architecture

Because deliberate motivation is scarce and easily displaced, the behavioural literature turns to redesigning the choice itself. Defaults are the strongest instrument. Pichert and Katsikopoulos (2008) showed that when a green electricity tariff was set as the default, the overwhelming majority of customers stayed with it, whereas take-up collapsed when the same tariff had to be actively chosen, a difference attributable to inertia and the implied endorsement carried by a default. Information nudges work more modestly. Ecolabels can steer choice, but their effect depends on consumer exposure to, comprehension of and trust in the label (Thogersen, Haugaard & Olesen 2010), which returns the argument to credibility; Australian schemes such as Good Environmental Choice Australia and the mandatory Energy Rating Label attempt to supply exactly this trusted, standardised information. White, Habib and Hardisty (2019) integrate these tactics, noting that defaults, prompts and social-norm feedback shift behaviour without requiring consumers to resolve the attitude-behaviour gap through willpower. The power of defaults, however, raises a transparency concern, since architecture that can promote sustainable choices can equally be used to obscure them.

Synthesis and Research Gaps

Table 1 consolidates the principal studies reviewed above, and a coherent account emerges once the antecedents in Figure 1 are distinguished. Environmental values and norms are widespread and genuine but predict costly purchases weakly; deliberative attitudes and perceived control form an intention that situational barriers then erode; greenwashing depresses the trust that intention requires; willingness to pay a premium is concentrated and context-dependent; the market divides into a committed core and an aspirational majority; and choice architecture can move behaviour without first winning the argument. The threads converge on a single conclusion: green purchase behaviour is governed less by the strength of environmental attitudes than by the credibility of claims and the friction of the purchase.

Table 1: Summary of key studies on green consumer behaviour and purchase intention

Several gaps warrant attention:

• Australian-specific behavioural evidence remains thin, with much theory tested on overseas or student samples rather than local shoppers in local retail conditions.
• Stated intentions and willingness to pay continue to dominate the evidence, while revealed-behaviour and field-experimental designs that track actual purchases are comparatively scarce.
• Longitudinal work is limited, so it is unclear whether green segments are stable or whether commitment migrates with economic conditions and cost-of-living pressure.
• The interaction between trust and willingness to pay is under-theorised, despite evidence that greenwashing and price premiums jointly determine whether intention converts.
• The consumer effects of recent Australian enforcement, including ACCC action on misleading claims and parallel regulatory attention to financial products, have yet to be evaluated.

Implications for Australian Marketers and Policy

For Australian marketers, the evidence counsels a shift from persuasion to enablement. Green attributes should be paired with the mainstream benefits of price, quality and convenience rather than framed solely as sacrifice, because the aspirational majority is not moved by the moral appeals that resonate with the committed core (White, Habib & Hardisty 2019; Roy Morgan 2023). Claims should be specific, substantiated and, where possible, carried by trusted independent labels, both because credibility drives intention and because unsubstantiated claims now attract regulatory risk. Friction should be engineered out through availability, prominent placement and, where legitimate, green defaults, following the electricity-tariff logic of Pichert and Katsikopoulos (2008).

For policy, the priorities are credibility and clarity. Vigorous enforcement against misleading environmental claims under the Australian Consumer Law, of the kind signalled by the ACCC internet sweep, protects honest firms from being undercut by cheap talk and rebuilds the generalised trust on which the whole market depends (ACCC 2023). Standardised, well-governed labelling reduces the search and verification costs that Thogersen, Haugaard and Olesen (2010) identify as decisive, and carefully designed defaults in domains such as energy can deliver environmental gains without relying on consumers to overcome the attitude-behaviour gap unaided. The overarching lesson for regulators mirrors that for marketers: the binding constraint is rarely a shortage of goodwill, but a shortage of trustworthy information and easy action.

Conclusion

Research on green consumer behaviour has converged on a robust and somewhat deflating conclusion: favourable environmental attitudes are common, broadly sincere, and yet only loosely connected to what consumers actually buy. The attitude-behaviour gap is not evidence of mass hypocrisy but the predictable product of price premiums, limited availability, entrenched habit and, crucially, the distrust bred by greenwashing. The theory of planned behaviour and value-belief-norm theory explain how intention forms; segmentation reveals for whom it is strongest; and the behavioural literature shows that defaults and credible labels can move behaviour where exhortation cannot. For Australian marketers and regulators alike, the implication is consistent. Progress depends less on amplifying environmental concern, which is already abundant, than on making green claims trustworthy and green choices easy. Until credibility and convenience are addressed together, stated green intentions will continue to outrun green purchases.

References

Ajzen, I. 1991, ‘The theory of planned behavior’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 179-211.

Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) 2023, Scrutinising corporate environmental and climate claims, ACCR, Melbourne.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2022, Environmental Views and Behaviour, ABS, Canberra.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) 2023, Greenwashing by businesses in Australia: Findings of the ACCC’s internet sweep of environmental claims, ACCC, Canberra.

Carrington, M.J., Neville, B.A. & Whitwell, G.J. 2010, ‘Why ethical consumers don’t walk their talk: Towards a framework for understanding the gap between the ethical purchase intentions and actual buying behaviour of ethically minded consumers’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 97, no. 1, pp. 139-158.

Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J.M. & Van den Bergh, B. 2010, ‘Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 98, no. 3, pp. 392-404.

Laroche, M., Bergeron, J. & Barbaro-Forleo, G. 2001, ‘Targeting consumers who are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products’, Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 503-520.

Nyilasy, G., Gangadharbatla, H. & Paladino, A. 2014, ‘Perceived greenwashing: The interactive effects of green advertising and corporate environmental performance on consumer reactions’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 125, no. 4, pp. 693-707.

Pichert, D. & Katsikopoulos, K.V. 2008, ‘Green defaults: Information presentation and pro-environmental behaviour’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 63-73.

Roy Morgan 2023, The rise of the ethical and environmentally conscious Australian consumer, Roy Morgan Research, Melbourne.

Stern, P.C. 2000, ‘Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior’, Journal of Social Issues, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 407-424.

Thogersen, J., Haugaard, P. & Olesen, A. 2010, ‘Consumer responses to ecolabels’, European Journal of Marketing, vol. 44, no. 11/12, pp. 1787-1810.

Vermeir, I. & Verbeke, W. 2006, ‘Sustainable food consumption: Exploring the consumer attitude-behavioral intention gap’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 169-194.

White, K., Habib, R. & Hardisty, D.J. 2019, ‘How to SHIFT consumer behaviors to be more sustainable: A literature review and guiding framework’, Journal of Marketing, vol. 83, no. 3, pp. 22-49.