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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how consumers’ altruistic values influence their personal norms, environmental attitudes, subjective norms and perceived barriers, all of which in turn influence their pro-environmental behaviour (i.e. the purchase of energy efficient household appliances).

This research follows a hypothetic-deductive approach. A unique conceptual model examines the role of consumers’ altruistic values in relation to their environmentally responsible purchase behaviour. Structured questionnaires were administered to randomly selected Vietnamese consumers who visited busy electronics and appliance specialist stores, which yielded 682 usable responses.

Structural equation modelling revealed that consumers’ altruistic values tend to positively influence their personal norms, environmental attitudes, subjective norms and mitigate their perceived barriers in relation to the purchase of energy efficient appliances.

Marketers, policymakers and sustainability campaigners should develop relevant communication and education programmes that emphasise the importance of purchasing energy efficient appliances for the environment and society, arousing consumers’ sense of moral obligation and societal responsibility to purchase such products. They should also provide a convenient and easily accessible shopping environment for consumers.

This research makes an important contribution by presenting and testing a new altruistic-values-based model that seeks to understand consumers’ environmentally responsible purchase behaviour. This model could serve as a blueprint for future studies in the domain of pro-environmental behaviour, especially those in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of consumers’ collectivism and long-term orientation (LTO) cultural values on their purchase intention in relation to environment-friendly products.

This research adopts a hypo-deductive research design. A unique conceptual model was developed by linking cultural values to key determinants of green purchase behaviour. This model was then tested using a quantitative survey of 682 shoppers in popular Vietnamese electrical appliance stores.

Analysis using structural equation modelling reveals that consumers with greater adherence to collectivism and LTO tend to engage in green purchase behaviour owing to their positive environmental attitudes, strong subjective norms and tolerance of inconvenience associated with eco-friendly product purchase. Gender is found to moderate the relationship between the determinants and purchase intention.

Marketers including manufacturers and policymakers must endeavour (change globally) to reduce or eliminate perceived inconvenience associated with green purchases. They should also effectively communicate messages stressing that eco-friendly product purchases are crucial for environmental protection and benefit consumer groups including family, peers and society in the long-run.

This research is the first of its kind which links consumers’ cultural values at a personal level to all the elements of the theory of planned behaviour. This research also extends current knowledge about green purchase behaviour in emerging markets by focussing on Vietnam.

Refurbishing houses is considered a key measure to improve the energy efficiency of the built environment. However, little is known about the implementation and outcome of housing renovation for energy upgrades in the Vietnamese practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the energy performance of the current housing stock in Vietnam and the potential to reduce energy use in households.

The paper is based on a survey with 153 respondents in three major climatic regions of Vietnam. The survey focusses on building characteristics, environmental performance, energy performance and refurbishment activities. Data collected from the survey were statistically analysed to give insight into the current performance of the housing stock and its energy saving potential.

This paper concludes that building design and construction, particularly the building envelope, have a significant influence on the occupants’ comfort. However, the energy consumption in houses is not statistically associated with building design and indoor environment. It is suggested that financial status and occupants’ behaviour currently have a strong influence on the household energy use. The survey also showed that refurbishment improves the housing performance, especially if improving the indoor environment was one of the drivers.

There are very few studies on energy use in households in Vietnam, especially with regards to actual energy consumption. This paper brings insights into the actual energy consumption and reveals the “performance gap” in Vietnamese housing stock.

This study investigates the underlying indicators for measuring the smartness of buildings in the construction industry; where the Smart Building Technology (SBT) concept (which incorporates elements of the Zero Energy Building (NZEB) concept) could ensure efficient energy consumption and high performance of buildings.

An overarching post-positivist and empirical epistemological design was adopted to analyze primary quantitative data collected via a structured questionnaire survey with 227 respondents. The mean ranking analysis and one-sample t-test were employed to analyse data.

Research findings revealed that the level of knowledge of smart building indicators is averagely high in the Ghanaian construction industry. Future research is required to evaluate the awareness level of Smart Building Technologies (SBTs) by construction professionals and identify barriers to its adoption.

A blueprint guidance model (consisting of significant indicators for measuring building smartness) was developed to help improve building performance and inform policymakers.

The purpose of this research paper was the study of an affluent Islamic market, going through a rapid economic and social transformation, from an ethical consumption perspective. More specifically, impact of environmentalism, consumption ethics, fair trade attitude and materialism was investigated on the ethical consumption behaviour of Muslim consumers.

A research framework was put together after consulting relevant literature, Islamic scholars and Islamic marketers. The developed research framework was tested in the Islamic State of Qatar. As an outcome of an online questionnaire-based survey targeting Muslim (Qatari) consumers in a public university, 243 usable questionnaires were collected. After reliability and validity checks, AMOS SPSS 20 was used to conduct structural equation modelling analysis on the collected data.

The results showed consumption ethics, environmentalism and fair trade attitude as significant determinants of ethical consumption behaviour. There was an insignificant association between materialism and ethical consumption behaviour. The findings suggested that most Muslim consumers within this affluent market showed an interest in ethical consumption. However, an insignificant association between materialism and ethical consumption behaviour implied that even though Muslim consumers demonstrated ethical consumption behaviour, they were not anti-materialism. The outcome suggests that due to the high levels of affluence among Muslim consumers, it is possible that they may be practising ethical and materialistic consumption simultaneously.

This research should assist marketers in understanding the ethical consumption behaviour of Muslim consumers who are faced with ethical and materialistic consumption options within an affluent Islamic market.

The research should add to the body of consumer behaviour knowledge, as it provides an insight into the consumption behaviour of Muslims who are facing social and religious ideology conflicts which makes their ethical consumption behaviours more sophisticated.

The effects of social learning and network externalities in the diffusion of a new product imply that there should be local spillovers from existing owners to new adopters in a closely related community. Using the data from a unique household survey in rural China, this paper aims to examine the importance of local spillovers in the diffusion of two major durable goods, washing machine and refrigerator.

Based on a 1999 rural household survey of durable goods consumption conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China, the authors examine the likelihood of rural households adopting a washing machine and a refrigerator during 1998-1999, respectively.

The estimation results indicate that a household is more likely to buy its first durable good in villages where a large share of households already own one. Further evidence suggests that these patterns are unlikely to be explained by unobserved local characteristics. When examined in more detail, the extent of local spillovers appears to be positively related to the household education level.

First, the study reveals the importance of local spillovers in the diffusion of these two durables. Specifically, 64 percent of washing machine adoptions during 1998-1999 are due to these spillovers. For refrigerator adoptions, the proportion is 55 percent. Second, to the authors' best knowledge, the authors are among the first to test and provide evidence on the interaction between education level and local spillovers based on the learning hypothesis.

To deal with the issue of irresponsible consumer behavior, this study aims to find out the significant determinants that direct sustainability in consumers' responsible behavior.

The study is quantitatively designed (survey approach) and targeted 520 respondents by deploying multistage sampling technique. The collected data is statistically analyzed in SEM-path analysis technique through Smart PLS 3.

The outcomes of study indicated that awareness of wasteful consumption (ß = 0.27, p = 0.00) and wastophobia (ß = 0.73, p = 0.00) strongly influence consumers’ mind to bring sustainability in responsible behavior.

This study suggests that the empirically tested wastophobia model can pave foundations in the theoretical literature to manage waste other than electricity waste, including time, food, water, agriculture, garbage, hazardous environmental pollution and natural reservoirs waste.

The study originates that promoting various conscious and unconscious aspects of wasteful consumption by focusing on fearful consequences of electricity waste supports to bring sustainability in consumers’ responsible behavior.

The purpose of the paper is to establish the need to study the shame-proneness trait of entrepreneurs – what is it and why is it important to study.

In this conceptual paper, the authors argue that shame-proneness is an important understudied trait of entrepreneurs and put up a case for further research. The authors argue that shame-proneness moderates the effect of social acceptability on opportunity exploitation decisions. The authors also argue that productive entrepreneurship can be promoted and unproductive entrepreneurship can be prevented through policy intervention, and the level of intervention can be determined by knowing the shame-proneness level of entrepreneurs.

The key argument is the following: an entrepreneur is homo economicus and homo sociologicus, i.e. she is driven both by rational economic value consideration and by the prevalent social norms, which influence opportunity exploitation decisions. Since shame enforces compliance with social norms, it is vital to study entrepreneurs' shame-proneness to understand entrepreneurial founding across different regions. Knowing the level of shame-proneness of entrepreneurs in a given region would help the government devise effective interventions to promote productive entrepreneurship and deter unproductive or destructive entrepreneurship.

This paper is an original creation of the authors.

The purpose of this research article is to explore the behavioural intention of consumers to use app-based shopping for green-tech products in the emerging economy of Bangladesh. The study investigates the indirect effects of perceived ease of use, usefulness, perceived delivery and perceived security on the behavioural intention to use app-based shopping for purchasing green-tech products by considering the mediating role of perceived trust.

A quantitative research approach was applied to collect data from the respondents who had previously used app-based shopping for green-tech products in Bangladesh. An online, self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 348 respondents. The survey data was analysed using SmartPLS-4 to measure the reliability and validity of the constructs. In addition, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the research model and hypotheses.

The study's results reveal that perceived usefulness, ease of use, security and delivery positively and significantly influence perceived trust, leading to a higher behavioural intention to use app-based shopping for green-tech products. Additionally, perceived trust significantly mediates the relationship between the behavioural intention to use app-based shopping and perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived security and perceived delivery.

The study's findings have important implications for app-based shopping services to support customers interested in purchasing green-tech products in an emerging economy. The results also indicate that green-tech product companies must adopt new service delivery channels and ensure consumers' convenience and cost and time savings. The present research findings suggest that green-tech product companies need to ensure that they integrate digital technologies into their services for secure and timely delivery of products, improving customer convenience.

The study's findings can be insightful for app-based shopping service providers to foster their businesses by focussing on developing a positive trust perception in the consumer's mind, leading to a positive intention to use the app-based shopping services. The present study will enrich the current literature by investigating how consumers' perceived trust affects their behavioural intention to use app-based online shopping for purchasing green-tech products. It will also expand the existing knowledge on app-based shopping by exploring how perceived delivery impacts perceived trust, which subsequently affects customers' intentions to adopt the purchase of green-tech products.

Energy-efficient retrofitting of existing buildings is an inexpensive way of reducing energy consumption and mitigating climate change impacts. The purpose of this study is to examine electricity savings and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission reduction potentials of energy-efficient retrofit measures for surveyed two large shopping malls in India.

A techno-economic model was developed to estimate the electricity savings achieved due to energy-efficient retrofit measures in shopping malls that were surveyed in 2017. Alternative scenarios were constructed based on capital cost and cost of conserved energy (CCE) value for retrofit measures: cheapest replacement, best available technology and best value for money. The life-cycle electricity and CO₂ emission savings and payback period for end-use retrofit measures were evaluated.

The estimated average electricity savings were around 39–56% for various retrofit measures across all three scenarios while the average CO₂ emission reductions were around 50–125 kt-CO₂. Retrofits to light-emitting diode lights and air conditioners with inverter technology offered more life-cycle electricity savings. Paybacks for most lighting end-use measures were estimated to be within 1.5 years while for most space conditioning end-use measures were between 1 and 4 years.

The primary survey-based comprehensive research makes an exclusive contribution by estimating life-cycle electricity savings and CO₂ emission reductions for energy-efficient retrofit measures of lighting and space cooling end-use appliances for existing shopping malls. The present research methodology can also be deployed in other types of commercial buildings and in residential buildings to estimate electricity savings from energy-efficient retrofit measures.