Exploring the sustainable consumption behavior in emerging countries: The role of pro-environmental self-identity, attitude, and environmental protection emotion

The paper examines the sustainable consumption behavior of two emerging countries, China and India. The conceptual framework incorporates egoistic value, social consumption motivation, altruistic values (stimulus factors), pro-environmental self-identity, attitude (mediators and organism factors), sustainable consumption behavior (response factor), and environmental protection emotion as a moderating factor, using stimulus-organism-response theory. We collected 658 original survey data from China (n = 337) and Indian (n = 321) customers via convenience and purposive sampling methods and analyzed the data with structural equation modeling. Intriguingly, the results show that (a) stimulus factors such as egoistic and altruistic values and social consumption motivation had a positive influence on pro-environment self-identity and attitude and sustainable consumption behavior in both countries, (b) pro-environment self-identity had a positive effect on the attitude of both countries' consumers (c) while mediation factors (pro-environment self-identity and attitude) had a significantly positive mediation relationship between stimulus and response factors, and (d) environmental protection emotion significantly moderated the relationship between stimulus, organism factors, and response factors of two countries. The study contributes to the current body of knowledge in sustainable marketing by examining the rapidly growing phenomenon of sustainable consumer behavior in two Asian countries.