Consumer environmental awareness and purchase intentions. A survey

Besides posing a serious threat to the health and life of the world population, COVID-19, a severe acute respiratory syndrome, has also changed significantly people’s habits concerning transportation. Indeed, the fear of getting infected has provoked a shift from public to personal transportation, which may lead consumers to prefer buying their own cars, rather than using public transport, with a negative impact on the environment. At the same time, however, recent research suggests that COVID-19 might have increased consumers’ environmental awareness, thus paving the way for increased diffusion of electric cars. Nevertheless, we know little about whether and how the growing environmental awareness created by COVID-19 (EAC-19) affects consumers’ (electric vs. gasoline) car purchase intention (EvsG-CPI). To investigate such an impact, we frame the decision to buy an electric vs. gasoline car as an ethical decision, and argue that it is influenced by both rational or deliberated (i.e., individual judgement) and non-rational or emotional (i.e., ethical obligations and subjective norms) factors. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results reveal that both a rational path and a non-rational path are at work in explaining the influence of EAC-19 on EvsG-CPI. On the one hand, a rational path is confirmed as the effects of EAC-19 on EvsG-CPI is mediated by ethical judgement. On the other hand, we find that both ethical obligation and subjective norms influence the relationship between EAC-19 and EvsG-CPI by acting simultaneously as mediators in a serial mediation model. Overall, our findings allow marketing scholars, electric car companies, and policy-makers to develop a better understanding of customers’ preferences regarding the purchase of cars in the new normal after the COVID-19 pandemic and, more generally, of the rational and non-rational factors underlying the purchase of environmentally-friendly products. Limitations of the study and avenues for further research are also discussed