**1. Introduction**

Major environmental issues caused by widespread human meddling, such as pollution, global warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, have a direct impact on the sustainability and quality of the environment and ecosystem (Xue et al. 2021). Although numerous studies have examined environmental difficulties for diverse groups of countries (Dulam et al. 2021; Zuza ´nska-Zy´ ˙ sko 2021) operations in this crucial sector are drastically restricted for Bulgaria, and integrated research on the topic is even nonexistent. Multiple initiatives aimed at achieving sustainable consumption and production have been promoted by national and international organisations. Bulgaria and the other 27 EU nations need to advance sustainable consumer behaviour (SCB) by acting in a common but differentiated way, wherein developed countries take the lead while developing countries act as per their development and capabilities (UNDESA 2014). The necessity to analyse different factors that influence the SCB is the focus of this paper. To understand consumer behaviour, the whole consumption cycle should be studied rather than just initial choices because post-choice behaviours such as product usage, product life extension, and product disposal also have a very important and equally significant impact on sustainability (Sheoran and Kumar 2020).

Many investigations, however, have been focused on individual industries and their development based on the globalisation processes. In this sense, globalisation has led to a

**Citation:** Dimitrova, Teofana, Iliana Ilieva, and Mina Angelova. 2022. Exploring Factors Affecting Sustainable Consumption Behaviour. *Administrative Sciences* 12: 155. https://doi.org/10.3390/ admsci12040155

Received: 14 October 2022 Accepted: 1 November 2022 Published: 4 November 2022

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'new paradigm where traditional industries, such as agriculture, employ state-of-the-art technologies to expand their possibilities into what is known as smart farming and the agri-food industry 4.0' (Pérez-Pons et al. 2021). The aim of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the sustainable consumption behaviour of consumers in Bulgaria.

From the authors' standpoint, the endorsement of sustainable consumption and production are very crucial aspects of sustainable development. This also applies to Bulgaria a country that has transitioned away from central planning and is currently part of the EU and the global market. The research tasks of this analysis are:


The significance of this topic rests on the claim that while SCB has been an occurrence for some time, the study on the subject is relatively recent: most of it has been conducted over the past two decades. It is crucial to remember that consumer behaviour will be the result of cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes and that it will be influenced and even conditioned by several circumstantial factors, starting with the notion that altering individual consumption patterns calls for more sustainable consumer behaviour (Figueroa-García et al. 2018). The subject of the paper occupies a central position in discussions, research, and organisational activities connected to the process of creating SCB. This plays an essential role in the Bulgarian economic environment and in the national strategies for environmentally friendly consumer behaviour.

To successfully complete the goals and tasks, the partial least PLS-SEM, and the latest software version of SmartPLS 4 were employed to test the hypothesised relationships. The survey was produced using an online questionnaire and quota sampling. A total of 489 complete and usable responses were collected from participants from all regions of Bulgaria between May 2022 and July 2022.

The paper is structured as follows: following the introduction, the second part presents the literature review based on contemporary research in the field of SCB determinants. The third part is focused on the research methodology. The latter provides the framework for the study and is the basis of the fourth part, which presents the empirical results. The paper ends with a discussion and conclusions for future research in the field of SCB.

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Sustainable Consumption Behaviour*

Sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB) has been connoted differently by different scholars depending on their backgrounds and may include a wide range of components and varying interpretations (Francis and Sarangi 2022). SCB is frequently used interchangeably with specific terms such as "pro-environmental consumption behaviour" (Saari et al. 2021), "green consumption behaviour" (Biswas 2017), "ethical consumption behaviour" (Ganglmair-Wooliscroft and Wooliscroft 2019), etc. This fact may be partly attributed to the complex and ambivalent nature of "sustainable consumption" (Piligrimiene et al. 2020 ˙ ) on the one hand, and to the evolution and transformation of this concept in time, on the other hand (Roy 2020). It is "sustainable consumption" (SC) that plays a fundamental and legitimising role for SCB.

Theoretically, sustainable consumption originated in ethical consumer research (Figueroa-García et al. 2018), where early studies focused on one facet of sustainable consumption only and attempted to understand it: for instance, the environmental aspect of the sustainable consumption phenomenon. They were, of course, important but did not constitute a systematic approach to sustainable consumption (Piligrimiene et al. 2020 ˙ ; Quoquab et al. 2019). Currently, sustainability is one of the key topics for organisations. In practice, organisations must adapt their long-term strategies to meet changing societal demands, including environmental and social aspects in their product offerings and decision-making (Haessler 2020).

In this regard, "sustainable consumption" presents a macro framework (with emphasis on the sustainability idea) which presupposes the demonstration of a certain holistic approach to its research. As pointed out by Wang et al. (2014, p. 154), "sustainable consumption is an umbrella term that brings together a number of key issues, such as meeting needs, enhancing the quality of life, improving resource efficiency, increasing the use of renewable energy sources, minimizing waste, taking a life cycle perspective and taking into account the equity dimension". That is, "sustainable consumption" is more than purchasing and consuming environmentally friendly products, and corresponds to a change in lifestyle (e.g., refraining from hyper-consumption), future orientation, and responsibility to the next generations. Our study adheres to the definition suggested by Quoquab and Mohammad (2017, p. 120), according to which, "sustainable consumption goes beyond the environmental concern by ensuring and managing the existing resources that are not only able to meet the current demand, but also without jeopardizing the needs of future generation".

There is no consensus among previous studies as to the definition of SCB. SCB is viewed from different perspectives (the policymaker's view, the marketing view, the consumer interest focus, and the ethical focus) and studied using different methodologies (Antonides 2017). Besides, this type of behaviour affects different areas, such as hospitality (Brandão and Cupertino de Miranda 2022; Wang et al. 2021), the fashion industry (Hirscher 2013), food product markets (Mancini et al. 2017; Fischer et al. 2017; Feil et al. 2020), the retail industry (Lehner 2015), and the forest sector (Häyrinen et al. 2016). Furthermore, it has a variety of forms, from the interest in organic and fair-trade labels in purchase decisions, the consumers' stated willingness to pay for local food (Toms, a et al. 2021), home water treatment plants, green walls, and eco-friendly architectural designs (Guzmán Rincón et al. 2021), the recycling of waste using energy-efficient appliances, ethical investments, travel mode switch, or the purchase of recycled goods, to adopting minimalist ways among others (Francis and Sarangi 2022). In this paper, we support the position of Aibar-Guzmán and Somohano-Rodríguez (2021, p. 1) that "customers are considered to be major stakeholders whose demands and preferences have a strong influence on corporate strategies". Additionally, we refer to sustainable consumption behaviour as a set of deliberate and effective actions of consumers that result in their quality of life, taking care of the environment, and resources for future generations (Guzmán Rincón et al. 2021).

In reviewing the literature on the various SCB-related issues, we found that different models had been developed and suggested for explaining sustainable consumption behaviour. In most of the existing research, SCB is regarded because of the effect of several pre-behavioural determinants, such as values (Lee et al. 2015; Sharma and Jha 2017; Ab. Wahab 2017; Kadic-Maglajlic et al. 2019), attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control (Vantamay 2018; Matharu et al. 2021), sex, personality traits, sustainable importance (Luchs and Mooradian 2012), psychological traits, situation, psychological state, environmental education (Pimdee 2020), connectedness to nature, love of nature (Dong et al. 2020). A different approach was chosen by Geiger et al. (2017) for their cube model of sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB-Cube), which includes a sustainability dimension (comprising a socio-economic dimension as well as an ecological one), a consumption phase (comprising different phases, not only the acquisition of goods and services but also their use and disposal), consumption areas (different areas of life such as food, housing, mobility, clothing, etc.), and the impact of chosen behaviours (ecologically and socially most impactful behaviours). Brandão and Cupertino de Miranda (2022) demonstrated the mediating role SCB played in decision-making when consumers purchased a luxury service. Phang et al. (2021) conducted a pioneering study on the moderating role of SCB in consumer behaviour research in the pandemic context.

Figueroa-García et al. (2018) maintained that past studies focused mainly on the internal factors that determine SCB, whereas the effects of external factors on SCB received little attention in the literature. They stressed that the reasons for the occurrence of certain behaviour could be clarified by understanding the context of the action since circumstances impose behavioural patterns that lead to certain forms of conduct and inhibit others. Their research provided evidence of the existence of relationships between three exogenous variables (environmental influences, education and information, and market conditions) and the endogenous variable of sustainable consumption behaviour. Pointing at the need for studying SCB in the broader social context, Wang and Hao (2018) attempted to fill the gaps in previous research by examining the effects of an important external social factor, Internet penetration, on individual SCBs. Their findings indicated that Internet penetration did not significantly influence individual SCBs, but substantially enhanced the transition from pro-environmental attitudes to sustainable behaviours. Similarly, Choudhary et al. (2019) observed that the intervention in information diffusion through social media could exert a targeted influence on SCB instances.

Due to the complexity of SCB, other authors have presented arguments in favour of the consideration of both internal and external factors as important predictors of the sustainable consumption behaviour of individuals (Piligrimiene et al. 2020 ˙ ; Wang et al. 2014; Wu et al. 2016). Some research also attempts to incorporate other factors such as materialism (Dong et al. 2018) and engagement (Kadic-Maglajlic et al. 2019). Earlier studies (Panzone et al. 2016; Bhutto et al. 2021; Sheoran and Kumar 2022) have indicated that demographic variables, i.e., age, gender, education level, income, etc., affect sustainable consumer intention and/or SCB. Table A1 (Appendix A) summarises in chronological order some of the factors affecting SCB by using structural equation modelling (SEM) for the past 10 years. Building on this literature, we aim to examine the following internal and external factors that influence sustainable consumption behaviour: environmental knowledge (EK), materialism (MAT), environmental influences (EI), the promotion of sustainable consumption (PSC), and sustainable consumption behavioural intention (SCBI). To the best of our knowledge, there is a limited number of studies on the influence of values with a negative effect, such as materialism, on SCB. The same also holds true for studies that would analyse the effect (direct or indirect) of PSC on SCB. The proposed research model has been shown in Figure 1. It is expected that EK, MAT, EI, and PSC affect SCB directly and indirectly. Moreover, it is hypothesised that SCBI mediates the relationships between the antecedents and SCB. Additionally, it is assumed that age has an important moderating role in associations of influencing factors with SCB.

**Figure 1.** Proposed research model.

#### *2.2. Influence of Environmental Knowledge, Materialism, Environmental Influences, and Promotion on Sustainable Consumption Behavioural Intention*

Environmental knowledge, or knowledge about environmental issues, refers to the information individuals have on the relevant environmental concepts, environmental problems, and the ecological effects of consumption and production (Saari et al. 2021). Many researchers agree that environmental knowledge does not directly influence behaviour but acts as a modifier of attitudes (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Vainio and Paloniemi 2014). According to earlier studies (Wang et al. 2014), environmental knowledge is positively correlated with behavioural intention. Therefore, it is hypothesised that:
