**H1.** *Environmental sustainability knowledge positively influences consumer's attitudes towards OCC purchase.*

Another attribute of the TRA is that subjective norms [36] form attitudes towards and eventually an intention towards a certain behavior. Subjective norms in the form of descriptive and social norms involves real activities and social pressure [46]. Many of the previous studies have found a positive influence of subjective norms during purchasing of green food [46], organic and sustainable food [47], organic skin/hair care products [48], and ethically product fashion products [38,49]. An individual may be influenced by those who are important to the person e.g., family members, friends, colleagues, or influencers [50]. Social norms influence a consumer's engagement with behavior that leads to actual behavior. Social norms are a very important factor that could be affecting a consumer's behavioral intention for organic cotton consumption. Social identification which is exhibited by environment-friendliness, organic, ethical, and socially responsible has been found to influence consumers buying behavior of OCC [51]. Since organic cotton is human and

environment-friendly consumers are expected to form positive attitudes and intentions towards OCC. Thus, we formulate the Hypothesis H2–H4:

**H2.** *Social norms positively influence consumer's attitudes toward OCC.*

**H3.** *Social norms positively influence consumer's behavioral intentions toward OCC purchases.*

**H4.** *Attitudes positively influences consumer's behavioral intentions toward OCC purchases.*

Environmental sustainability is predominantly based on the role of government regulation. Eco-friendly practices are being applied by agencies across a wide spectrum of regulations by implementing processes, procedures, and policies. Common people are divided in their attitudes in terms of environmental issues. Study findings show that sustainable consumption as well as establishment of a sustainable environment are governed by government rules and legislations [52]. To develop sustainable consumption it is important to enhance awareness of the mass populace about ecological biodiversity which can be done by implementing favorable government policy and regulations [52,53].

An individual's training from the surrounding social environment where he/she grew up is defined as culture. Based on the context of culture, consumer behavior changes and it is evident that the consumption patterns also change [54]. The United States has an individualistic culture where people are more interested in individual benefits and preferences, personal success, and independence [32,55] whereas Asian countries such as Bangladesh have a more collective culture, where people focus on in-group/ aggregate benefits, social harmony, and integrity of family [32,56]. The cultural dimension is related to sustainability by the way a culture maintains a link with the past dealing with environmental challenges [57]. Sustainable consumption is connected to the common traditional practice of a society which brings individual consumers feeling about what their actions may contribute to present and future outcomes [58]. In a developing country such as Bangladesh, it is a moral obligation for citizens to not waste food, or clothing. Religion also teaches the importance of morality, be friendly to the environment, and to practice living a frugal life. Citizens of a developed nation such as the USA can live a lavish life with more independence and freedom which may include wasting money, food, clothing, etc. Previous studies have demonstrated that consumer's country of residence and their behavior on sustainability is mediated by sustainability attitudes [58,59]. Hence, presumably, there is an influence of social-cultural perspectives on consumer sustainability knowledge and social norms considering the diverse cross-cultural position of Bangladesh and the USA. Thus, we formulate the following Hypothesis H5:

**H5.** *The salience of the relationship between TRA constructs will be different across consumers from the US and Bangladesh.*

#### **5. Methodology**

All constructs driven from the theoretical framework were administered in a survey to test the formulated hypotheses. Most of the items were adopted from the previous literature on OCC purchase behaviors. The items and the sources of the items are described in Appendix A (Table A1).

#### **6. Questionnaire Design**

The research questionnaire was adopted from previous research [32,51]. The questionnaire written in English, contained three sections. The first section provided a general description of the research, the aim of the research, questions on whether the participants have used organic cotton or not, and a short description of organic cotton. In the subsequent section, the participants were requested to indicate their perception, attitudes, and intentions towards the use of OCC. Questions that symbolize the constructs of the conceptual model were measured using a 5-point Likert scale with "1 = strongly disagree, to 5 = strongly agree [60]". The final section consisted of demographic information, gender,

age, level of education, and income level. Participants were advised of their rights to withdraw from the study at any time without any negative consequences.

#### **7. Sample**

To conduct the research, sample groups from a metropolitan city area of the USA and Bangladesh were selected. Participants of age 18 or over were recruited for the online survey. Convenience sampling was used for data collection. The questionnaire was uploaded in Qualtrics.com, an online data collection website, and then distributed among participants through email by sending the survey link starting from November 2020. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were also used to invite participants to participate in the survey. Out of 145 responses, a total of 136 (response rate of 93.80%) useable responses were collected and used in the main analysis. Among the useable responses, 85 were from the US sample (91.76% were female; 4.71% were male) and 51 responses from the Bangladesh sample (7.84% were female; 88.24% were male) were analyzed to evaluate the consumer behavioral intention to use OCC (see Table 1). Demographically, a significant proportion (92.94% US and 49.02% Bangladesh) of the participants were in between age 18 to 25 years. A majority (69.41%) of US participants were college students while 54.90% of Bangladeshi participants were college graduates. In terms of household income, 86.27% of Bangladeshi participants earned less than USD 25,000 while 25.88% of American participants were in this income group.


**Table 1.** Demographic information.

#### **8. Results Analysis**

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with principal component analysis was first conducted to purify and confirm the scale dimensionality, using a varimax rotation. The factor loading of each item for EFA in both the US and Bangladesh dataset were from 0.501 to 0.836. Then, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the measurement model. The result of the measurement model exhibited an acceptable model fit (χ 2 (*df* = 129) = 212.295, *p* = 0.000, χ <sup>2</sup>/*df* = 1.646; RMSEA = 0.088; CFI = 0.915; TLI = 0.9177) [61] in terms of US data. The measurement model for the Bangladesh data exhibited an acceptable model fit (χ 2 (*df* = 129) = 297.777, *p* = 0.000, χ <sup>2</sup>/*df* = 2.308; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.162; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.664; Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.602) [61]. For both the US and Bangladesh data, the convergent validity and discriminant validity were assessed to represent the construct validity. All CFA loadings were higher than 0.5, which provided evidence for convergent validity; and the average variance extracted (AVE) for each construct was greater than 0.5 [62], suggesting that each construct is well represented by its own indicators. Finally, the structural equation model (SEM) was then conducted to evaluate the proposed hypotheses

based on the literature review [61]. The statistical results revealed an acceptable model fit (χ 2 (*df* = 131) = 365.908, *p* < 0.000, χ <sup>2</sup>/*df* = 2.79; RMSEA = 0.189; CFI = 0.532; TLI = 0.454) for the Bangladesh dataset and an acceptable model fit (χ 2 (*df* = 131) = 285.75, *p* < 0.000, χ <sup>2</sup>/*df* = 2.181; RMSEA = 0.119; CFI = 0.842; TLI = 0.815) for the US dataset. The summary of the SEM has shown in Figure 1 and Table 2.

**Figure 1.** Comparison of standardized estimates from SEM analysis. Significance \* *p* < 0.05, \*\* *p* < 0.01, \*\*\* *p* < 0.001. Here a represents the USA dataset and b represents the Bangladeshi dataset.

**Table 2.** Path analysis result (USA vs Bangladesh).


Note: \* *p*-value < 0.05, \*\* *p*-value < 0.01, \*\*\* *p*-value < 0.001.

#### **9. Discussion**

The primary focus of this study was to examine the similarities and differences of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds in terms of OCC purchase intentions. A theoretical model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action was constructed to test the formulated hypotheses. This study is the first-ever to study consumer behavioral intention to purchase OCC from the US and Bangladeshi consumers' perspectives.

There are many similarities and differences between the people of the two target groups. First, sustainability knowledge was a strong predictor of consumers' positive attitudes towards OCC in the US data while sustainability knowledge of the Bangladeshi consumers was not found to be a strong predictor of attitudes. This finding is consistent with a previous comparative study in the US and Chinese consumers' purchase behavior of green apparel [33]. This is believed to be due to the existence of consumers' distinct hedonic and utilitarian shopping behaviors based on socio-cultural differences [63,64]. Similarly, Attitudes were found to be an important predictor of US consumers' purchase intention of OCC whereas in terms of Bangladeshi consumers' this relation was not significant. A notable difference between US and Bangladesh consumers was that social pressure influences consumers' positive attitudes formation. Social norms were not found to be a strong predictor in US consumers' positive attitudes formation towards OCC whereas social norms were a very strong predictor for Bangladeshi consumers' positive attitudes formation. This major difference in the consumers' purchase decision is primarily because of the cultural differences influencing consumer behavior and the finding is consistent with a previous study on the US and South Korean consumers [32]. This is presumed to be because Bangladeshi consumers are from a collective culture where they are mostly influenced by other people who are important to them [65,66]. Interestingly, the social norms were a strong predictor of consumer's behavioral intentions to purchase OCC from consumers of both countries. When consumers perceive it is significant to the people purchasing OCC, they are more likely to form a positive intention to purchase. To form a positive attitudes and purchase intention for American consumers, marketers should focus on educating consumers by providing more information about the positive impact of OCC and resulting environmental sustainability. On the other hand, marketers need to put more emphasis on forming positive social viewpoints by endorsing social influencers to market leaders which are assumed to encourage Bangladeshi consumers to form a positive attitudes and purchase intention.

#### **10. Limitations and Future Research**

This research has been conducted in metropolitan areas in the United States and Bangladesh. Hence, participants of this study may not represent the view of the whole population and the results cannot be generalized. Future research may examine the association between attitudes and purchase intention of consumers from both urban and rural contexts with diverse demographic profiles such as age, education level, and income representing the population properly. Additionally, the research was conducted on small sample groups with unequal gender distribution which is a potential limitation. The research was conducted by describing the differences between organic and conventional cotton fibers. However, analysis of experienced consumers' behavioral intention may provide more valuable insights on OCC usage. Therefore, future research can be conducted on consumers who have used OCC in their daily lives.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, writing—original draft preparation, data analysis, M.N.U.H.; supervision, review and editing, C.L.; writing—original draft preparation, data collection, B.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available within the manuscript. Additional data is available upon request from the corresponding author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
