Predicting consumer purchase intention toward hybrid vehicles: testing the moderating role of price sensitivity Maqsood Hussain Bhutto Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland Beenish Tariq NUST Business School, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan Sarwar Azhar, Khalid Ahmed and Faiz Muhammad Khuwaja Department of Business Administration, Sukkur IBA, Sukkur, Pakistan, and Heesup Han College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea Abstract Purpose – Today, global warming is one of the most acute challenges in the world, prominently caused by greenhouse gases. The introduction of hybrid-vehicles (HVs) is thus, one of the industrial initiatives to tackle this challenge by allowing at least some proportionate reduction in global-gas-emissions. Such initiatives like HVs have also affected the consumers’ green-purchase-intention (GPI). Hence, underpinned into the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this study aims to analyze consumers’ response in terms of GPI for HVs, in addition to exploring the moderating-effect of price-sensitivity between independent-variables (attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control) and consumers’ GPI for HVs. Design/methodology/approach – The data was collected from 266 automobile-consumers with the help of questionnaires. A two-step approach was used to analyse the given hypothesis with the help of partial least squares structural equation modelling (Smart-PLS 3.2.7). Findings – First, significant empirical-evidence was secured regarding the impact of given independent- variables (i.e. attitude, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control) on consumer’s GPI for HVs. Second, the empirical-evidence for the moderating effect of price-sensitivity onto the association between given independent-variables (except for the perceived-behavioural-control) and the consumers’ GPI for HVs, also turned out to be quite substantial in this study. Originality/value – In-line-with the TPB, this study extends the existing body of literature regarding consumers’ GPI as it was significantly contingent to the given independent variables of the study, whereby, the price-sensitivity has been recognized as a key moderator particularly in the context of developing countries such as Pakistan. The present study thus provides in depth-insights to guide automobile manufacturers and marketers to redefine their pricing strategies to further strengthen the consumer’s GPI for HVs within certain socio-contextual setup. Automobile establishments should thus, The authors received no financial support for this paper. Predicting consumer purchase intention Received 31 October 2019 Revised 13 March 2020 21 May 2020 28 June 2020 Accepted 6 July 2020 European Business Review © Emerald Publishing Limited 0955-534X DOI 10.1108/EBR-10-2019-0274 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0955-534X.htm