Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser Green purchasing behaviour: A conceptual framework and empirical investigation of Indian consumers Deepak Jaiswal a, ⁎ , Rishi Kant b a Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management (M&SCM), School of Business and Management Studies (SBMS), Central University of Himachal Pradesh (CUHP), Dharamshala, (H.P.) India b Department of Retail & Logistics Management, DDU Kaushal Center, Central University of Haryana, Mahendergarh, Haryana, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Environmental concern Perceived consumer effectiveness Attitude towards green products Environmental knowledge Green purchase behaviour Structural equation modeling (SEM) ABSTRACT The purpose of this empirical study is to operationalize the relationship of cognitive factors influencing on green purchase intention directly and indirectly via the mediating role of attitude towards green products which in turn investigated with green purchasing behaviour in order to validate the proposed research model in the Indian context of ecologically friendly buying behaviour. The model is based on ‘attitude-intention-behaviour’ and analysed by using structural equation modeling (SEM) from that data collected of 351 Indian consumers. The findings unveiled that Green purchase intention (GPI) was significantly and directly driven by Attitude towards green products (AGP), Environmental concern (EC), and Perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) di- rectly and indirectly via the mediating the role of AGP however, perceived environmental knowledge (PEK) was found to be insignificant effect on both AGP and GPI in this study. Moreover the measure of GPI was found to be the fundamental predictor of Green purchase behaviour (GPB) in the model. Hence, the present model provides valuable inputs to policymakers and marketers to design from the perspective of green marketing policies and strategies in order to cope with the indigenous Indian context. 1. Introduction Unsustainable level of consumption globally leads to severe en- vironmental sustainability issues such as global warming, water, air and land pollution, and waste generation which drive society to change their conventional consumption patterns and purchase behaviour to- wards the pursuit of environmental sustainability. Consequently the phenomenon of green consumer behaviour has been evolved as a new paradigm of marketing discipline for marketers and researchers in the realm of contemporary consumer research (Ottman, 1998; Charter et al., 2002; Peattie and Belz, 2010; and Lai and Cheng, 2016). Re- garding this behavioral phenomenon, numerous studies have been found in developed nations towards pro-environmental behaviour (Ottman, 1998; Kalafatis et al., 1999; Peattie and Charter, 2003; Zhao et al., 2014; and Yadav and Pathak, 2016). While in Asian developing economies like India and China etc., a few studies have been ac- knowledged purchasing behaviour for green products, still such litera- ture on ecological issues and consumer research is a bit scant in the Indian context (Chan, 2001; Mostafa, 2006; Chen and Chai, 2010; Yadav and Pathak, 2016; and Kumar et al., 2017). In the line of above discourse, Nielsen Survey (2011) on Global Online Environment and Sustainability found that 86 percent of Indian consumers has shown positive attitude towards energy efficient pro- ducts and appliances, followed by recyclable packaging (79%) and least impact was given to products not tested on animals (41%), and fair trade products (44%). Similarly National Geographic Society and the international polling firm Globescan brought out the report on Greendex (2010) that the top scoring consumers were in the emerging economies of India, Brazil, and China; however industrialized countries ranked at the bottom. Moreover India has witnessed as the second fastest growing emer- ging economies with the highest youth population with two third po- pulation which having the below age of 35 years, educated, and self- belief in speedy action oriented generation over the world leading to a young nation known as ‘YOUNGISTAN’. Thus it is clear that Indian consumers are increasingly conscious towards the benefits of sustain- able practices and environmentally friendly behaviour with the char- acteristics of rising young segment of population and their education level, such primary indicators has opened new avenues in the field of green behavioral research in India with the equal footing of green consumerism worldwide (Jain and Kaur, 2004; Datta, 2011; Paul et al., 2016; Yadav and Pathak, 2016; and Prakash and Pathak, 2017). Despite https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.11.008 Received 3 August 2017; Received in revised form 7 November 2017; Accepted 21 November 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: djaiswal93@gmail.com (D. Jaiswal), rishikant111@gmail.com (R. Kant). Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 41 (2018) 60–69 Available online 07 December 2017 0969-6989/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T