Leibao Zhang

In order to solve the environmental problems caused by the increasing private car use in China, such as transport energy consumption, traffic congestion, and air pollution, many policy measures including car purchase taxes, restrictions on car use in the city center, and incentives to promote electric vehicles have been developed. By taking Hangzhou, a low-carbon metropolitan city in China, as an illustrative example, green transport policies have been proactively implemented in order to turn the metropolitan city into an ecologically livable city. However, citizens’ acceptance of comprehensive green transport policies has seldom been studied and explored, which is actually quite valuable information for implementing and assessing the effectiveness of green transport policies. This study presents a new integrated framework by extending the value belief norm (VBN) theory in order to explore the internal factors for predicting citizens’ acceptance of comprehensive green transport policies and other pro-environmental behaviors in the transport field. A survey on car use reduction was conducted among citizens in Hangzhou and a quantitative analysis was performed using a structural equation model (SEM) method. Results show that personal norms can successfully predict citizens’ acceptance of pull policies for reducing car use, while is less capable of predicting that of push ones. The theoretical implications of different pro-environmental behaviors are explained. This analysis may inspire policy makers to implement appropriate policies to encourage the public to use low-carbon transport in daily life.

It remains uncertain as to whether people who support waste classification end up transforming such environmental initiation into reality. Thus, to investigate the intention and actual behavior of Chinese residents on waste classification and the influencing factors, this study integrated the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and norm activation model (NAM), and extended them by adding external information factors, namely information publicity type and information quality. A questionnaire survey was conducted in mainland China, and the primary data from 349 individuals were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to verify the model. The conclusions confirmed that personal norm was a major predictor of residents’ waste classification intention, and there exists a gap between Chinese residents’ waste classification intentions and actual behaviors. Furthermore, strategies such as moral education and information publicity are important in policy implementation. These findings are helpful for Chinese policymakers in promoting and planning waste classification, and also provide experiences to other countries for combating similar waste problems in their metropolises.

Sustainable development is a powerful impetus to achieve the coordination between economic advancement and environmental protection. Therefore, the promotion and adoption of green consumption has attracted increasing attention from academics. As an important tool for multivariate data analyses, structural equation modelling has been extensively used in purchase intention for green products. However, most previous research has recognized green products as a general class when studying their purchase intention, which focused little attention on comparing purchase intention for different kinds of green products. This study extends and tests the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and includes another cognitive construct, that is, environmental concern, to explore purchase intention for different kinds of green products. First, the effect of TPB constructs was examined on purchase intention for utilitarian green products and hedonic green products. Second, a cognitive factor, that is, environmental concern, was used to test its different effects on these two kinds of green products. Third, the indirect effect of environmental concern on purchase intention was measured for these two kinds of green products. The study showed that extended TPB constructs, that is, attitude, perceived behavior control, and environmental concern positively and significantly affected purchase intention for both utilitarian green products and hedonic green products, while subjective norm only significantly and positively affected purchase intention for utilitarian green products. Moreover, the cognitive factor, that is, environmental concern, had a higher effect on purchase intention for utilitarian green products than purchase intention for hedonic green products, and it also had a similar indirect effect on both kinds of green products. This study provides an insight to policymakers, entrepreneurs, and marketers into how to increase purchase intention for different kinds of green products.