| Abstract [eng] |
This study aims to investigate how consumers’ environmental awareness and different types of social norms, influenced by social media engagement and impression management motivation, affect the intention to purchase eco-friendly products, particularly in the context of food. Quantitative data was collected through an anonymous online survey, resulting in 333 valid responses. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS4 was employed for data analysis. The findings suggest that environmental awareness plays a pivotal role in both directly and indirectly (via attitude) increasing consumers’ intention to purchase eco-friendly products. Among social norms, only injunctive norms showed a statistically significant impact on purchase intention, whereas descriptive norms did not. Social media engagement enhanced both types of social norms, yet impression management motivation did not significantly moderate the relationship between social norms and eco-friendly purchase intentions. These results indicate that marketing strategies should prioritize fostering environmental awareness and emphasizing injunctive norms, particularly through social media. Future research could adopt experimental designs to explore how social norms work when evoked or how impression management motivation can shape eco-friendly purchase intentions via attitude. However, the sample was mostly highly educated young females, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Also, the lack of a universal measure for the higher-order construct of social media engagement limited verification of convergent validity, suggesting a need for improvement in future research. |
