Sustainable consumption: Insights from the protection motivation (PMT), deontic justice (DJT) and construal level (CLT) theories

Abstract

Purpose

While there has been a great deal of research to distinguish the factors that promote the adoption of sustainable consumption, however there has been a very little attention given to the contribution of justice, coping appraisal, and psychological distance. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role of deontic justice, protection motivation, and construal level theories to elucidate the green purchase intention.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 471 participants in a laboratory experiment. Then, structural equation modeling was carried out to analyze the data.

Findings

Protection motivation theory is valuable to apply specifically since it introduces the concept of coping appraisal. The findings demonstrate that deontic justice theory (DJT) is a suitable framework that can be employed to shed more light on sustainable consumption. The study shows that consumer can conceptualize a green product at different levels of concreteness or abstraction.

Originality/value

This study is a pioneering effort to look at sustainable consumption within the context of DJT. It departs from the more traditional research by repositioning moral obligation as the primary driver of green purchase intention and by elucidating when green purchase intention is elevated in investigating the moderating role of mindset.

Citation

Ibrahim, H. and Al-Ajlouni, M.M.Q. (2018), "Sustainable consumption: Insights from the protection motivation (PMT), deontic justice (DJT) and construal level (CLT) theories", Management Decision, Vol. 56 No. 3, pp. 610-633. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-05-2016-0323