Measuring purchase intention towards green power certificate in a developing nation: Applying and extending the theory of planned behavior

Green power certificates consumption among individuals can offer environmental public good to minimize pollution caused by the overuse of traditional energy. Studies related to the consumption intention of green power certificates in a developing nation were rare due to the late start market. Regarding this, the present research has attempted to explore consumer purchase intention towards green power certificates in an economic and cultural context of a developing nation, China. The study has adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as the basic theoretical framework and further attempted to incorporate additional constructs (environmental concern, face concern and green perceived value) in measuring its applicability for predicting purchase intention towards green power certificate. A total of 796 effective data samples was collected from the one-on-one field investigation evidenced by latitude and longitude, geographic location of internet protocol, photos and recording backup of each respondent by a convenience sampling approach and analyzed by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in evaluating relationships among constructs. The findings reported that the usefulness and applicability of TPB in predicting the Chinese adult' purchase intention. The research result supported the applicability of additional construction in TPB as well, as this result has improved the stability of the proposed theoretical model (from 0.063 to 0.059) and made a better understanding on the purchase intention of the Chinese consumer towards green power certificates. In the end, the implications towards policymakers and further research direction have been discussed.