Green Product Attitudes in Taiwan: Affect vs. Knowledge

Introduction and Background

Sustainable energy, organic food, green technology, and green products are buzzwords in popular culture, consumer publications, and business school course outlines today. Both government and market researchers have been studying the reasons consumers purchase green products or make other environmentally friendly decisions. Providing for the environmental concerns of customers is a win-win strategy for the planet and the firm. Green consumers have been shown to be willing to pay a higher price for environmentally friendly products (Laroche, Bergeron & Barbaro-Forleo, 2001; Peattie, 2001), which represents a significant opportunity for companies and governments seeking to make eco-friendly policy changes.

Understanding who green consumers are and how to transform conventional consumers into green purchasers has become increasingly important. When considering all the factors that make encouraging desired behavior in consumers difficult—including limited financial resources—understanding what influences consumers' decisions to purchase green products would be extremely valuable to policy makers and marketers alike. Research applying established behavioral theories to environmental consumption can help identify the key drivers of sustainable purchasing decisions.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) has proven effective for measuring green purchasing behavior in diverse cultural settings. Chang and Lau (2001) demonstrated that the TPB model achieved satisfactory external validity when measuring the green purchase behavior of American and Chinese consumers. At its foundation, the theory postulates that an individual's behavior is determined by behavioral intention, which is shaped by three factors: attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control.

Theoretical Framework and Research Questions

Studies suggest that because purchasing green products is a deliberate decision, an individual's attitude greatly affects their willingness to perform that action. Two key determinants of attitudes are affect and cognition (or knowledge). In this ecological context, Ecological Affect (EA) refers to a person's emotional response and personal involvement in environmental situations, while Ecological Knowledge (EK) refers to understanding factual evidence surrounding environmental issues.

Chang (2001) extended the TPB by adding cognitive, affective, and cultural constructs to measure green purchase behavior in Chinese consumers. This hybrid model shows that both knowledge and affect influence individuals' attitudes toward green purchases. Earlier studies (Laroche, Bergeron & Barbaro-Forleo, 2001; Peattie, 2001; Saphores et al., 2007; Tanner & Sybille, 2003) found that ecological affect had greater influence than ecological knowledge in shaping attitudes toward green products among Chinese consumers.

This study tests whether these findings hold true for university students in Taiwan. The primary research questions are: Which factors determine consumer attitudes toward green purchases? And between cognitive and affective factors, which exerts greater influence on attitudes toward green products?

The study formulates three hypotheses. The first addresses ecological affect: students with high ecological affect scores will show a statistically significant difference on an attitude toward green purchases scale compared to students with low ecological affect scores. The second hypothesis proposes that ecological knowledge will not show a significant difference in attitudes toward green purchases between high and low knowledge groups. Finally, if both prior hypotheses hold true, the third hypothesis—that ecological affect exerts stronger influence on attitudes toward green purchases than ecological knowledge—will be confirmed through comparison of the first two results.

The study used a simplified model focused on measuring the influence of ecological affect and ecological knowledge on green purchase attitudes, deliberately excluding measures of culture and behavioral intention. A four-part survey was administered in three IMBA classes at two universities in Hsin Chu, Taiwan. The survey collected demographic information (age, education level, sex), included a working definition of green products adapted from Chang and Lau (2001)—"products that either through their manufacturing or usage have a reduced negative impact on the environment when compared to their traditional counterparts"—and measured attitudes toward green purchases, ecological knowledge, and ecological affect.

Study Methodology

An initial pre-test yielded 32 responses but revealed non-sampling errors: respondents often selected only extreme values on Likert scales and reported confusion about how to respond. This data was discarded. A revised survey provided clearer response guidance, eliminating reported errors and yielding 41 usable responses.

Participants rated three statements on a 7-point semantic differential scale (1 to 7) to measure attitudes toward green purchases. The mean of these three statements served as each participant's AGP score.

Ecological affect was measured using five statements on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree), with one reverse-coded item. The mean score across the five items provided the EA score (1–5). Ecological knowledge was assessed through five multiple-choice questions; one correct answer earned one point, producing an EK score of 0–5. These measurement approaches align with widely accepted methods in ecological research (Chang, 2001).

Participants were divided into high and low groups for each construct. High ecological affect was defined as a mean score of 4–5 on the 5-point scale (n = 21), while low ecological affect was 1–3 (n = 20). High ecological knowledge was defined as answering three or more of five multiple-choice questions correctly (n = 22), and low ecological knowledge was fewer than three correct (n = 19). A two-tailed t-test with equal variances was used to compare AGP scores between high and low EA groups. A two-tailed t-test assuming unequal variances compared AGP scores between high and low EK groups.

A convenience sample of 41 university students participated. Eighty-three percent held an undergraduate degree, 10% held a master's degree or PhD, and 7% were completing undergraduate work. Seventy-one percent were aged 20–29 years, 20% were 30–39, and 7% were 40–49. The gender distribution was 51% male and 49% female, closely matching the targeted 50–50 split from prior studies.

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for attitudes toward green purchases (AGP), ecological affect (EA), and ecological knowledge (EK). The overall mean AGP score was 5.70 (SD = 1.18) on the 7-point scale. For ecological affect, the mean was 3.86 (SD = 0.82); the high EA group (n = 21) had a mean of 6.17, while the low EA group (n = 20) had a mean of 5.20. For ecological knowledge, the overall mean was 2.56 (SD = 1.27); both the high EK group (n = 22) and low EK group (n = 21) showed nearly identical AGP means of 5.71 and 5.70, respectively. These descriptive patterns provided initial support for the study's hypotheses.

A two-tailed t-test comparing high EA and low EA groups on AGP scores was conducted. The results strongly supported the first hypothesis: students with high ecological affect showed a statistically significant difference in their attitudes toward green purchases compared to students with low ecological affect. The null hypothesis was rejected at p < 0.05, confirming that emotional engagement with environmental issues predicts more positive green purchasing attitudes.