How Ecologically Conscious are Millennials? A Study of Young Consumers

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the millennial generation have become a major segment in green marketing and have been identified for their pro-environmental attitudes. The current study explores the influencers (socialization agents) impacting the ecologically conscious consumer behavior (ECCB) of the millennials using the consumer socialization framework. For this purpose the impact of socio-structural variables (age, gender, education and family income), socialization agents (family and peers) and perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) on environmental concern (EC) and ECCB has been studied in the Indian context.A sample of 325 millennials from a premier B-school was investigated through survey research method. Regression and mediation analyses, using PROCESS v 3.2, was administered to arrive at the results. Regression analysis confirmed the positive impact of perceived consumer effectiveness on ECCB. It also established the influence of socialization agents on environmental concern and ECCB of millennials. Further, mediation analyses revealed that, environmental concern mediated the relationship between family as a socialization agent and ECCB, while for peers it did not. In addition, environmental concern was established as a mediator between PCE and ECCB.The study confines itself to a sample of millennials from B-school background, and hence, may not be representative of the entire millennial generation. Among the socialization agents, the current study only considers family and peers in its framework, and remains silent on the evolving role of social media as an influencer.The findings have significant implications for both academicians and practitioners by highlighting the importance of social networks such as family and peers as channels of communication for effective implementation of marketers’ strategies.The current study contributes to the limited literature on millennials green buying behavior in the emerging market context. The applicability of the consumer socialization framework to collectivistic countries like India has been underexplored. Using this framework our study establishes the mediating role of environmental concern in the model. Further we have made an attempt to investigate the role of EC as a possible mediator between PCE and ECCB as it has been rarely explored.

Keywords

• illennials
• socialization agents (family and peers)
• ecologically conscious consumer behavior
• environmental concern
• perceived consumer effectiveness
• consumer socialization