Os papéis dos antecedentes favoráveis e desfavoráveis na percepção de benefício verde, e seus efeitos no comportamento pró-ambiental: um modelo integrativo

Abstract

The negative impacts of human activities on the environment have contributed to the emergence of a consumer segment worried about environmental threats that began to consider the effects about your consumption pattern, and to opt for green consumption. However, while some studies point to a positive relationship of perception about threats to the environment with pro-environmental consumption, others have not confirmed it. A possible explanation for this divergence is the perception of green benefit, aspect that may not be perceived by consumers in context of consumption. Thus, to investigate this aspect, this research aimed to analyze the roles of beliefs (perception of environmental threat and skepticism toward advertising) and consumption context (perception of greenwashing and familiarity with green products) on perception of green benefit, and its effects on pro-environmental behavior. For this, a model that integrates the contextual perception with the Theory of Planned Behavior and Environmental Psychology was proposed and tested in a methodological approach of quantitative nature, from a survey with a sample of 466 supermarket retail consumers. The technique used for processing and analysis of data was the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with estimation by partial least squares. The results confirmed the consistency of the proposed model. The contextual perception of green benefit has been shown: (a) to be positively influenced by the consumer familiarity with green products (b) to be negatively by the skepticism toward advertising and the perception of greenwashing, that were even confirmed as distinct constructs, although they are sometimes treated as synonyms, and (c) to play an important role as mediator between belief and intention, and belief and declared behavior.