Determinants of the intention to purchase sustainable beer: Do gender and type of sustainable solution matter?

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on the determinants of sustainable products' purchase intention, with a focus on sustainable beer. Specifically, three determinants related to the theory of planned behavior (i.e., perceived consumer effectiveness, social influence, and environmental concern) and two determinants related to the perceived value (i.e., green perceived utility and perceived quality) have been investigated. Five categories of environmentally sustainable beer have been considered: three referred to the types of ingredients (organic, local, and Italian) and two to the type of packaging (recycled and biodegradable). Furthermore, the effect of gender has been investigated for all the five above-mentioned sustainable solutions. A survey has been conducted on 790 Italian consumers and structural equation modeling (SEM) has been employed for hypothesis testing. Results show that perceived quality, green perceived utility, and environmental concern influence the purchase intention of sustainable beer, regardless of the specific type of sustainable solution. Further, results highlight that gender does moderate the relationship between perceived quality and purchase intention only for two types of sustainable solutions (local ingredients and recycled packaging). Several implications for scholars, companies, and policymakers are drawn from this study.