Investigating Australian consumers’ green energy purchase intention and behaviour within the scope of TPB: PLS-SEM modeling approach

There is scarce research in the domain of green energy marketing literature exploring the antecedents of consumers’ green energy purchase intention and behaviour (GPIB), despite the importance of this area. In this study, Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB, 1991) is used as a theoretical framework to empirically explore the antecedents of GPIB with the aim of extending the prior research. This theoretical framework has already been employed to explain pro-environmental behaviours, suggesting its appropriateness in this context. The research model for this study is conceptualized with salient elements of TPB constructs - attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control (PBC), and extended the TPB with an integration of personal norm to investigate their influence on GPIB. The study captures both behavioural intention and actual behavior (reported) under the TPB framework, where both direct and indirect influences of the aforementioned factors on GPIB are examined. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is used to analyze the data of 386 Australian households and test the proposed conceptual model. The finding of the study confirmed that GPIB is significantly directly and indirectly influenced by PBC in the model. In addition, it would appear that attitude measure has significant influence on intention but not on actual behaviour. All the findings reported found to be consistent with the theoretical background. This study contributes to and extends our understanding of the green energy buying behaviour among consumers in Australia, to the author’s best understanding, only modest research effort has been given to explore this topic. The findings have implications for academics, marketers, retailers and policymakers of the green energy industry.