Does religion make consumers more environmentally friendly?

Abstract

Purpose

Despite the importance of sustainability, some conservative religious groups do not believe and support climate change. There is a continuous debate on the role of religion on people’s attitudes toward the environment. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to (1) explore the impact of consumers’ religious orientation on motivation and commitment toward recycling; (2) examine the impact of economic motivation, commitment and love for nature toward intention to recycle; (3) investigate the mediating effect of motivation, commitment and love for nature on the relationship between consumer religiosity and their intention to recycle; and (4) examine the impact of consumers’ intention toward its subsequent behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

Using convenience sampling methods, participants were recruited through an online survey platform (MTurk). The total completed respondents are 827 participants.

Findings

The results show consumers’ religiousness influence their motivation, commitment and love for nature. This study shows that consumers with high intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness are more likely to be motivated by economic motivation. Being religious does not make consumers more environmentally friendly.

Research limitations/implications

This study did not separate religion and between religious and non-religious consumers. Each religion may perceive environments differently. Future research may investigate each religion separately.

Originality/value

This paper has several contributions: (1) it contributes to the debate on the impact of religiousness on consumers’ attitudes toward sustainable-related behavior such as recycling. Does it matter? (2) the results show the most effective way to increase people’s intention to recycle; and (3) the results of this study will have implications for government, religious institutions on how to increase positive attitude toward the environment especially among religious consumers.

Citation

Arli, D., Pentecost, R. and Thaichon, P. (2021), "Does religion make consumers more environmentally friendly?", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 39 No. 8, pp. 1024-1041. https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-09-2020-0404