A Moderated Mediation Analysis of Lebanon’s Food Consumers’ Green Purchasing Intentions: A Path Towards Sustainability.

Abstract

As the concern for climate change and ecological disasters grows globally, different elements that can encourage and increase green behaviors have become a point of attention for scholars and practitioners. The current research primarily focuses on the factors that can impact green purchasing intentions and steps toward achieving sustainable development goals in the Lebanese context and specifically Tripoli. This study examines the role of consumer spirituality in determining green purchasing intentions along with the moderating effect of subjective norms and environmental concerns and the mediating effect of perceived consumer effectiveness. By deploying a cross-sectional survey, 350 responses from food industry consumers were collected using a judgmental sampling technique. The data were analyzed using partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) under the premises of the theory of planned behavior and norm activation theory. The findings suggest that a direct linkage exists between consumer spirituality and green purchasing intentions among Lebanese food consumers. Moreover, the mediating role of perceived consumer effectiveness was partially supported along with the moderating impact of subjective norms. This is while the moderating effect of environmental concerns was not found statistically significant, which implies a distance between being environmentally aware and actions that support this concern. This finding highlights the importance of considering consumers’ spiritual orientation when analyzing the impact of spirituality in the realm of green marketing. The implications of the findings can be beneficial for strategic improvements among firms as well as directions for scholars to expand upon the current understanding.