Pro-environmental purchase intention towards eco-friendly apparel: Augmenting the theory of planned behavior with perceived consumer effectiveness and environmental concern

The textile industry has emerged as a major pollution source owing to a rise in carbon footprint, the spike in greenhouse gas emission, and increasing landfill waste. Sustainable fashion has become a new style statement and industries are shifting their orientation towards environment-friendly manufacturing. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) model was employed with environmental concern, personal moral norms, and perceived consumer effectiveness to better predict the eco-friendly apparel purchase intention of educated Indian youths. Variance-based partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to evaluate the hypothesized model. Findings indicated that perceived behavioral control has a strong significant positive influence on purchase intention followed by personal moral norms, attitude, and perceived consumer effectiveness. Environmental concern was found to have an indirect effect on purchase intention through three primary TPB variables and personal moral norms. Multi-group analysis (MGA) was performed to examine the moderating effect of perceived consumer effectiveness on an attitude-intention relationship. The highly perceived consumer effectiveness group was shown to have a more consistent attitude-purchase intention relationship as compared to the low-perceived consumer effectiveness group. The study promulgates insights to professionals and policymakers to formulate sustainable marketing strategies and policies to cope with the indigenous market conditions.