**1. Introduction**

Environmental degradation caused by inappropriate consumption patterns of human beings is one of the most severe problems facing people today [1–3]. The search for sustainable consumption patterns has become a topic of widespread concern in countries worldwide [4,5]. In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit officially adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [6], the blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future. Those are envisioned as universal goals relevant to developed and developing countries [7]. Among them, SDG 12 ensures sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns. This makes sustainable consumption a more important topic to be studied to help achieve the SDGs. Therefore, how to effectively promote sustainable consumption and harness the power of consumers to contribute to sustainable economic, social and environmental transformation are also issues worth studying.

Sustainable consumption is not about consuming less but consuming differently [8]. SCP is the integration of production, consumption, disposal and recycling processes [9] rather than focusing only on the quantity consumed. Especially in developing countries, sustainable consumption patterns should avoid reducing growth and undermining economic and social demand but rather increase social and economic prosperity by creating new markets and adopting appropriate policies and incentive structures, as well as stimulating better use of technology [10].

**Citation:** Qin, B.; Song, G. Internal Motivations, External Contexts, and Sustainable Consumption Behavior in China—Based on the TPB-ABC Integration Model. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 7677. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14137677

Academic Editors: María del Carmen Valls Martínez, José-María Montero and Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes

Received: 6 June 2022 Accepted: 22 June 2022 Published: 23 June 2022

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China has become the second-largest economy, with GDP per capita exceeding \$10,000 for two consecutive years in 2019 and 2020 [11]. The booming service sector, driven by continued consumption upgrades, reflects Chinese consumers' increased demand for high-quality consumption [12]. The sustainable consumption market in China has unleashed vast consumer potential. More and more Chinese consumers are waking up to sustainability awareness and are actively practicing sustainable lifestyles [13]. Therefore, it is essential to research sustainable consumption behavior in emerging markets in China. Dongying, a prefecture-level city in Shandong Province, joined the UNEP Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) program in 2016. As the first city in China to be selected for PAGE, Dongying actively summarizes, introduces, and disseminates the city's sustainable development practices to the international community through the UN platform, providing developing countries with experiences and examples to follow [14].

Current research on sustainable consumption behavior has concentrated on two theoretical approaches: environmental psychology and environmental sociology [15]. The former approach mainly considers the influence of internal subjective factors on individual behavior. For example, ecological attitudes, behavioral perceptions, selfefficacy, and other internal factors can form the consumer's self-motivation, promoting sustainable consumption behavior [16]. The latter considers the interactions between micro individuals and external context systems and argues that individuals' ideas and behavioral choices depend on the level of social and technological development [17]. Undeniably, the existing studies provide strong explanatory power for the reasons for implementing consumers' sustainable consumption behaviors and offer corresponding insights into promoting sustainable consumption.

However, a review of the previous literature reveals that existing studies have mainly analyzed the influencing factors of sustainable consumption behavior from a single perspective of internal motivation [18] or external contexts [19], lacking a systematic exploration of the decision-making mechanism of sustainable consumption behavior from a multidimensional perspective. In addition, some studies measured different types of sustainable consumption behaviors and aggregated them into one variable [20,21], the measurement that assumed different types of sustainable consumption behaviors occurred simultaneously and synchronously. In fact, different behaviors have very different requirements in terms of cost, capacity, and convenience [20], which may result in the same individual having different attitudes and behaviors toward different types of sustainable consumption.

Accordingly, based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [22] and Attitude-Behavior-Context (ABC) theory [19], the study attempts to construct a theoretical framework (Figure 1) that includes internal motivations and external contexts to explore the influencing factors and the decision-making mechanism of sustainable consumption behaviors and analyze the heterogeneity among different types of sustainable consumption behaviors [23,24]. This will further provide a multidimensional approach to promoting consumption behavior's sustainable transformation. It may help inform policies for a sustainable transformation of consumer behavior in developing countries.

**Figure 1.** The theoretical framework of the TPB–ABC integration model; Source: authors.
