Factors Affecting the Green Housing Purchasing

(Vlosky, Ozanne and Fontenot, 1999). According to the study by D’Souza (2004), though
consumers had been convinced on the importance of the environment, they could still be
sensitive to prices and might not be willing to pay higher for environmentally friendly
products. People who are aware of the importance of environmental problems may not be
willing to pay higher price, and still made purchase decision based on price and quality
rather than environmentally friendly characteristics of products (Gan, Wee, Ozanne and
Kao, 2008). Paco and Raposo (2009) found that economic factors sometimes had higher
influence on decision to purchase environmentally friendly products than negative effect to
the environment.
2.2.3 Government role (GR)
The government role in supporting various activities concerning the environmentally friendly
product consumption has direct effect on consumers’ interest on participating in the
environmental activities. From the study by Haron, Paim and Yahaya (2005, cited in Chen
and Chai, 2010), government played an important part in supporting consumption and
sustainable development in Malaysia by introducing various strategies to create an
awareness on the importance of the environment to the public. There are various ways of
government in getting involved in an environmentally friendly consumption such as rules
and regulations, taxing, interest, subsidies, and research and development (Hudson, 2007).
Chyoung et al.(2006, as cited in Chen and Chai, 2010) found that though an individual is
aware of the environmental importance, he/she still believe that it is the main
responsibilities of the government to take care of the environment. This was consistent to
the study by Raisback and Wardlaw (2008) where an individual who had environmentally
friendly behavior had a high tendency to purchase a green housing if there was a support
from the government.
2.3 Behavior Intention
This construct reflects the motivation to express one’ own behavior which indicate an
individual’s intention, less or more, in revealing such behavior. It is the readiness of an
individual in performing the particular behavior (Ajzen, 1991; Han et al., 2010; Han and Kim,
2010; Kim and Han, 2010). In this study, behavior intention refers to “intention to purchase
green housing (IP)”.
3. Methodology and Model
3.1 Model and Hypotheses
Theory of planned behavior (1985) is selected as an appropriate theory to study behavior of
environmentally friendly product consumption here. However, there might be some other
constructs from the environmental context which also affect intention to purchase a green
housing. In order to predict purchase decision on environmentally friendly product,
especially on green housing, there should be additional constructs which can better explain
the environmentally friendly behavior intention. The proposed model and hypotheses in this
study are shown in figure 1 where all 6 independent constructs are hypothesized to affect
intention to a purchase green housing positively.
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