ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2014, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (7): 1014-1031.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.01014

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

消费者为何喜欢“说一套, 做一套”  —— 消费者伦理购买“意向?行为”差距的影响因素

邓新明   

  1. (武汉大学经济与管理学院, 武汉 430072)
  • 收稿日期:2013-01-10 发布日期:2014-07-25 出版日期:2014-07-25
  • 通讯作者: 邓新明
  • 基金资助:

    国家自然科学基金项目(70902053, 71272232)、湖北省社会科学项目(2012146)。

Why Ethical Consumers Don’t Do What They Say: The Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Ethical Buying Intention-Behavior Gap

DENG Xinming   

  1. (Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China)
  • Received:2013-01-10 Online:2014-07-25 Published:2014-07-25
  • Contact: DENG Xinming

摘要:

运用深度访谈法, 考察了消费者伦理购买意向?行为差距的深层次影响因素。研究结果发现:第一, 中国情境下, 消费者在进行伦理购物决策时, 确实会表现出明显的购买意向?行为差距, 接近58%的消费者言行不一致; 第二, 伦理购买意向与购买行为之间的不一致, 不仅仅只是由伦理消费者本身的特质所决定的, 还受到不由消费者主观控制的消费情境的影响; 第三, 消费者特质变量主要包括:道德成熟度、经济导向、购买惯性、愤世嫉俗与消费者伦理认知努力, 其中道德成熟度对消费者伦理购买意向具有直接影响, 经济导向、购买惯性、愤世嫉俗与伦理认知努力对购买意向与行为之间关系具有显著的调节影响; 第四, 情境因素变量主要包括:物质环境、社会环境, 购买任务与现行状态, 同时情景因素变量对购买意向与行为之间关系均具有显著的调节影响。最后, 文章提出了相关的重要结论, 旨在试图弥补伦理消费者购买意向?行为差距, 进而为企业制定与实施有效的伦理营销策略提供重要的实践启示。

关键词: 伦理消费, 伦理购买意向, 伦理购买行为, 意向与行为差距

Abstract:

It has long been understood that intentions are poor predictors of behavior and that gaining insight into this gap is of critical importance to understanding, interpreting, predicting, and influencing consumer behavior. The gap, however, remains poorly understood, especially within the ethical consumerism context. In this article, our aim is to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward by drawing on the investigation of Chinese consumers’ ethical purchasing intention-behavior gap from the combining perspectives of consumers’ individual characteristics and environmental factors. This situation has profound implications for the marketers of ethical products, as product launches based on intentions to purchase are more than likely to result in costly failures. In-depth interviews with consumers are conducted, as they enable researchers to gain “a more accurate and clear picture of a respondent’s behavior”. The interview guidelines for the in-depth interviews were carefully prepared and, after pretesting, slightly adapted. Finally, a total of 235 individual interviews were conducted. Interviewing continued until redundancy was reached, implying theoretical saturation. The interviews took place in Wuhan city in summer 2010. The interviews lasted between 30 and 60 min. With the participants’ permission, each interview was audio-taped and transcribed, resulting in 867 pages of text. Furthermore, content analyses were taken to code the text. The PRL reliability value was between 0.68 and 0.93, which represented the average inter-coder agreement had reached a reasonable level. The findings are as follows: (1) In Chinese context, when making ethical purchasing decisions, consumers’ ethical purchasing intention-behavior gap will indeed take place, and nearly 58% of them are not going to walk their talk; (2) The ethical buying intention-behavior gap is influenced by consumers’ personal traits and the environmental factors simultaneously; (3) Consumer individual trait variables mainly include moral maturity, economical orientation, buying inertia, cynicism, and consumer ethical cognitive efforts. And moral maturity has a direct impact on ethical intention, all other variables will moderate significantly the relationship between ethical buying intention and behavior; (4) Environmental factors mainly consist of physical environment, social environment, purchasing task, and current status. And all situational factors have a moderating role on the relationship between ethical buying intention and behavior. It is generally accepted that an individual’s intentions will directly determine their actual behavior. Yet, the article concluded that investigations that relied on intention as a proxy for actual behavior must be interpreted with caution. Secondly, intention-behavior models of consumer choice artificially isolate decision making, ignoring the external effect of the environment/situation on purchase behavior. In fact, the paper concludes that, during the transition between purchase intention and actual buying behavior, the individual interacts with a physical and social environment and this interaction with environmental factors influences their decision making. Finally, the paper provides us with some profound conclusions and insightful implications upon how to motivate a consumer’s support of a firm’s ethical behavior and to transfer this kind of support into truly positive purchasing behavior.

Key words: ethical consumption, ethical purchasing intention, ethical purchasing behavior, intention-behavior gap