The significance of the research on green consumption behavior is not only to reveal the laws of green consumption behavior, but also to provide useful suggestions for the promotion of green consumption behavior. Therefore, the topic is of significance. This paper adopts bibliometric method to probe into the research findings of green consumption referenced by China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). In recent years, the study about green consumption has been made both at home and abroad, mainly focusing on the connotation, characteristics of green consumption, factors influencing green consumption behavior and green consumption develop ment strategies, etc. But as far as the present state of study is concerned, there are few scholars study the mechanism of the green consumption behavior from the perspective of social comparison and point out that future research should highlight the multidisciplinary research perspective. Besides, empirical analysis tool should be strengthened in the research to detect the mechanism of green consumption behaviors.
In recent years, the haze weather, and water pollution has placed a great negative impact and painful results on people. And the green consumption is the key to solve the environmental crisis. “Guidance on the promotion of green consumption” also reflects the distorted consumption mode which has caused serious environmental problems in China. Vice Minister of Commerce Yan Gao pointed out that investment in energy- saving and environment protection will reach 17 trillion Yuan [
At present, a growing number of scholars at home and abroad has been to study the green consumption. Objectively, [
Green consumption research began in the 1940s. However, there is no integrated system of green consumption concept [
Shijie Yin defined the green consumption as the standard that people set for green consumption products, including High-quality [
Thus, according to the literature review at home and abroad, the study adopts the definition of the green consumption Roozen and De Pelsmcker pointed out , that is acquisition of environment friendly green products, including Recyclable products, energy-saving products and organic products.
Although the majority of consumers are interested in buying green products, the consumer behavior is not consistent with the positive attitude [
However, according to the costly signaling theory, when green products have higher premiums, consumers will choose to sacrifice self interests and to purchase green luxury products. At the same time, according to the theory of competitive altruism, green consumption can help individuals to enhance their own reputation, and make them more willing to pay more money for green product. Therefore, green consumption is considered to be synthesis of the self-interest and altruism driven.
There are four motivations in the current researches on the green consumption.
To pursue health [
To show the status of themselves. To some extent, purchasing green products with high price means that consumers are willing and able to sacrifice individual interest for the interest of the group. And [
Eager to be recognized. In order to narrow the distance with the desired group, and even become one of its members, [
To follow the public. When buying green products becomes a consumer fashion, [
Green consumption research began in 1940s, the study is not yet mature, mainly as follows:
One is the consumer characteristics [
Two is the factors influencing green consumption, including the consumer factors [
Three is the psychological mechanism, including consumer factors, products, and situational factors, measurement methods and other factors. There is no fixed methodology in this part of research. But survey method, experimental method and interview method all have been involved, [
Four is the restricting factors. Although, green consumption is regarded as one of the best consumption patterns, to completely replace the traditional linear consumption patterns also faces a series of institutional barriers. There are three main constraint factors in China, including price restriction and market demand restriction and consumption environment restriction.
Pro-social behavior includes all the behavior which is beneficial to the society and has a positive effect on the public. Green consumption is a kind of pro-social behavior which was seen as synthesis driven by the individual interests and other people's interests (such as opposed harm others’ health and destroy the air pollution of the global climate) [
Scholars just started studying the influence mechanism of green consumer behavior from the perspective of social comparison in recent years, and few domestic scholars study in this perspective [
Buunk Nauta and Molleman argued that social comparison is closely related to environmental behavior. In the face of limited earth resources, compared with people who have idea comparison tendency, the people who have ability comparison tendency consider more impact of their choices on the environment [
Throughout studies of green consumption at home and abroad, the study find that there has been relatively mature about green consumption at abroad. Scholars proposed and discussed the concept and connotation of green consumption, analyze the significance of green consumption, green consumption behavior from the perspective of philosophy, economics, ecology and so on. In particular, they probed into mechanism of green consumer behavior from the perspective of sociology, and use the Likertt scale method, structural equation model and regression analysis of quantitative research methods to research factors influencing the green consumption behavior intention and actual behavior. But a lot of scholars don’t reach an agreement on these results, especially the influence of the objective factors on green consumption consumer, which is different and even contradictory.
Although studies of green consumption at home is later than abroad, it has developed rapidly at present [
Based on this, this paper analyzes main content about the behavior of green consumption at home and abroad and the weakness of the past studies,in order to provide the direction for the study of green consumption in the future, and to promote the development of green consumption research at home.
The limitations of this study are as follows:
Firstly, it lacks theoretical research on green consumption. And the empirical study of psychological mechanism is extremely scarce. Secondly, there is few of research on pro-social behavior and mechanism, only a few literature refers to the influence of social comparison on pro-social behavior, and just is concentrated on the parallel comparison more. Thirdly, the research on influence of internal group identification on consumer behavior mostly refers to foreign achievements; the applicability remains to be tested in different situation.
Fourthly, participating in pro-social behavior can improve its reputation; however, scholars rarely discussed the relationship between green consumption and face consciousness.
According to the current research status and existing problems, the scholars could study how the social comparison tendency affect green consumption decision in the future study. On the one hand, the study could probe into the green consumption by increasing two dimensions (use behavior and disposal behavior) to enrich the formation mechanism of green consumption. On the other hand, to subdivide the green product types consumers consume. The mechanism of the effect remains to further research and so on. The analysis of these problems will not only enrich and develop study on the mechanism of effect of the social comparative on green consumption, but also help the enterprise in China to promote green products, which has important theoretical and practical significance [
Lin, D.D. and Chen, H.Q. (2016) A Review of Green Consumer Behavior Based on the Social Perspective. Theoretical Economics Letters, 6, 1088-1095. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/tel.2016.65104