An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Personal Perception Factors On Socially Responsible Consumer Behavior

After30years of reform and opening up, China’s modernization process takes extensive industrial development path and resource consumption mode as economic growth mode. Although domestic economy is in steady growth, modernization has achieved all-round development and people’s lives has been greatly improved, the costs of development are the rapid deterioration of the ecological environment, the exhaustion of resources, the decrease of life quality, the frequent happening of food safety problem and the serious social contradiction, all of which have become the bottleneck that restricting China’s sustainable economic development and the harmonious development of society. The building of resource-saving and environment-friendly society can not be separated from active participation of social subjects. Only with the active participation of consumers in the construction of social responsibility system and actively fulfilling socially responsible consumer behavior, can the full realization of a harmonious society be possible.Since the1990s, researches of socially responsible consumer behavior in the West tend to be in diversified, comprehensive, dynamic and become the focus of Western academic research. The concept and the pattern of socially responsible consumer behavior spread and develop rapidly, thus contributing to the enrichment of the theoretical research. Currently, consumers have unconsciously dabbled in socially responsible consumer behavior, such as green consumption, environmental protection consumption, ecological consumption, economy in consumption. But the socially responsible consumer concept in domestic consumption practice is not yet universal, consumers know little about connotation of socially responsible consumer behavior. Domestic theoretical research lags behind the west for more than30years and it is still in the early stages of concept definition, connotation analysis and behavior classification. Empirical studies of socially responsible consumer behavior are often from a single behavior perspective, lacking systematic and related mechanisms researches. Therefore, this study, using standardized empirical research methods, based on theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, explores influencing factors of the socially responsible consumer behavior and further clear the impact mechanism of socially responsible consumer behavior. Specific contents are as follows:Firstly, based on theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, it analyzes the factors that influencing socially responsible consumer behavior. Taking the personal perception factors as the starting point, this study builds research model of the influence of the personal perception factors on the socially responsible consumer behavior. Secondly, according to field research data, the regression model was established to verify the impact of the various dimensions of individual perception factors on each dimension of the socially responsible consumer behavior. Thirdly, the following results are made based on empirical analysis:(1) Perceived consumer effectiveness has significant positive effect on the resource-saving responsible consumer behavior while perceived personal effort degree has no effect on it.(2) Perceived consumer effectiveness has significant positive impact on the environmental friendly responsible consumer behavior while perceived personal effort degree has negative effect on it.(3) Perceived consumer effectiveness has important positive impact on the supervision and rights responsible consumer behavior and perceived personal effort degree has significant negative effect on it.(4) Perceived consumer effectiveness has positive impact on the stakeholder responsible consumer behavior while perceived personal effort degree has negative effect on it.(5) Education level and knowledge have regulation effect on personal perception factors and socially responsible consumer behavior.(6) Gender difference is one of the reasons for the differences between personal perception factors and socially responsible consumer behavior.Finally, the main purpose of this study is to get clear the model that personal perception factors affecting socially responsible consumer behavior and conclusions derived through empirical research:(1)The perceived consumer effectiveness and the perceived personal effort degree, as two dimensions of the personal perception factors, have different impact on the socially responsible consumer behavior. Therefore, the two theoretical paths for achieving the popularity of social responsibility consumer behavior are:first, continue to strengthen validity and effectiveness of consumers’perception. Second, continue to weaken personal effort of consumers’perception, try to avoid the problem of "interest mechanism" drive. These two paths are only function when they cooperate and promote with each other, because the perceived personal effort is not the only way that make the socially responsible consumer behavior come true.(2)The personal perception factors have no effect on the habits and endogenous behavior, consumer awareness of social responsibility can be transformed into consumer faith from the aspects of the culture, ethics, values. Forming habitual behavior can be the inevitable way to realize the mode of socially responsible consumer behavior.(3) The study finds that the sensitivity of the female consumers on the perceived personal effort degree is higher while the sensitivity of the male consumers on the perceived consumer effectiveness is higher. Therefore, the key points of developing the socially responsible consumer behavior of female consumers is to weaken the perceived personal effort while enhance the perceived consumer effectiveness. Male consumers, since they have higher perceived consumer effectiveness, lower perceived personal effort degree, therefore the difficulty of implementing the social responsibility in male consumers’ behavior is relatively low.(4) The research finds that consumers know little about socially responsible consumer behavior. Highly educated consumers are more likely to implement this behavior, so highly educated consumers can be the leaders in promoting the socially responsible consumption behavior, playing an exemplary role to promote the popularization of socially responsible consumer knowledge and behavior. It puts forward related policies and recommendations for consumers to actively fulfill their socially responsible consumer behavior from the perspectives of businesses, consumers, government and mass media. Also, research limitations and prospects are summarized.