¶ … Environmental Concern on the Purchase of Green Products: An Empirical Study of German Retailers Respondents

The verification of the conceptual framework and hypotheses was done using questionnaire survey. Primary data was gathered from a sample population of 270 respondents who were residents in Germany and who had had bought electronic goods before. One of the major industries dedicated to decreasing their impact on the environment is the "consumer electronics" industry. The industry has applied several green initiatives that focus on the environmental issues in manufacturing, clean delivery systems, energy efficiency and design.

The survey was done in 2016 between the months of August and September. Researchers collected the data and the interviewees were approached directly and they guaranteed that there was no scale interference to lower the possibility of influenced or biased answers.

The demographic composition of the survey's respondents was as follows:

Age

20-25

5(1.8%)

26-30

86 (31.9%)

31-35

112 (41.5%)

36 and above

67 (24.8%)

Gender

Female

148 (54.8%)

Male

122 (45.2%)

Education

Undergraduate

1 (4%)

Graduate

84 (31.1%)

Post graduate

166 (61.5%)

Doctoral degree

19 (7%)

Occupation

Private services

188 (69.6%)

Business

38 (14.1%)

Government job

21 (7.8%)

Self-employed

23 (8.5%)

Table 1: Demographic composition of the respondents

As the table shows, respondents were included from a wide range of age groups. Most of them, 41%,...

The minority age group was the 20 to 25 age group that accounted for only 1.8% of the sample. Generally, those aged 36 and over accounted for 24.8% while those aged between 26 and 30 accounted for 31.9%.
When considering the education levels of the respondents chosen, those respondents who had finished their masters made up 61.5% of the sample while those who had only an undergraduate degree made up only 4% of the sample. The remainder respondents in the sample had other qualifications that feel between a bachelors and a doctoral degree.

Measurements

The respondents used the Likert scale to evaluate the aspects of self expressive benefits, purchase intention, attitude, environmental knowledge and environmental concern. The scale was from 1 to 5, with 5 being 'strongly agree' and 1 being 'strongly disagree'.

This model gives quantitative values on the validity and reliability of the aspects utilized (highlighted above) in the study. To assess convergent validity, factor loading, composite reliability the formulas presented by cronbach's alpha and average variance extracted were utilized (Ahmad & Thyagaraj, 2015).

On the validated scale, Environmental Concern had a total of seventeen items, Declared Purchase had 13 items while Purchase Intention had 15 items. To evaluate the application of these scales, we used models that were similar to Likert and used a 1 to 5 agreement/disagreement range with 1 representing 'complete disagreement' and 5 representing 'complete agreement'.

For the OTHERS column, participants were also requested to score their overall concerns from the same range of 1 to 5. Data analysis of frequency tests was done using SPSS 15.0 while structural equation modeling was evaluated using smart PLS 2.0 -- M3 and frequency tests (Ringle, Wende & Will, 2005).

SEM was used as the main data analysis method. The model evaluated the cause and effect of the relationships that existed between the various constructs and the hypotheses tests that would follow through the evaluation of coefficients.

The construct of Measure model, Partial Least Square -- Path Modeling (PLS -- PM), was used. On doing a Mardoa PK test to check the balance and similarity with the normal multivariate distribution (Hair et. Al., 2013), the results showed significance (p