Research on the influencing factors of consumers’ green purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era

The severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world has caused consumers to think about environmental issues. Although green products are very important to environmental sustainability, the factors that influence consumers' purchase behavior of green products is unclear. This study aims to explore the impact mechanism of social media marketing on consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study constructs an extended TPB model to understand the influencing factors of Chinese consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. The empirical results of 489 questionnaires show that social media marketing, product knowledge and crisis awareness have a direct or indirect positive influence on purchase intentions. Perceived behavioral control and intentions have positive effects on behavior. The attribution of responsibility facilitates the relationship between intentions and behaviors. The results have important implications for enterprises’ sustainability strategies and provide a framework for investigating green buying behaviors in Chinese culture in the post-pandemic era.

Study on the relationship between crisis awareness and medical waste separation behavior shown by residents during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Specific awareness is an important factor that affects individual behavioral decisions. This study explored the relationship between crisis awareness and medical waste separation behavior shown by urban residents during the COVID-19 epidemic in China. The results of a questionnaire survey data (N = 668) were subjected to statistical analyses, regression analyses, and cross-analyses. In terms of medical waste separation, the detection rate was 12.65%, among which, the waste separation behavior by citizens was the highest (24.56%). In terms of the relationship between crisis awareness and medical waste separation behavior, the crisis awareness generated by the environmental situation is significantly related to individuals' participation in the separation of medical waste. In particular, individual spontaneous crisis awareness only had a significant positive correlation with the waste separation behavior for the decision factor. The residents were clustered into "sensitive", "conscious", "passive", and "insensitive" types based on the original crisis awareness characteristics. The "sensitive" group was more actively involved in the separation of medical waste, while the "insensitive" group showed the worst performance for the separation of medical waste. A comparison of the separation behaviors shown by the "conscious" group and the "passive" group confirmed that environment-driven crisis awareness has a higher correlation with the separation of medical waste by residents.