Determining antecedents and outcomes towards Philippine social enterprises: A theory of planned behavior perspective

Abstract

Despite increasing national and global recognition of a growing number of social enterprises, most still struggle creating awareness of their brands and advocacies, especially in a developing country such as the Philippines. To address these aforementioned issues, gain consumers’ perspectives regarding these social enterprises, and understand their purchase behaviors, the research conducts a survey with 642 respondents guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), complemented by theoretical discussions involving goodwill towards social enterprises and personal dispositions of social enterprise customers. Respondent demographics show that a majority of the respondents have made purchases from social enterprises and those who have not, indicate a high interest in buying social enterprise products in the future. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, the study found that perceived benefits and product knowledge exert considerable influence on social norms and attitudes toward social enterprises, while ethical self-identity, perceived risks, and perceived contributions produced mixed results. Furthermore, familiarity with the social enterprise does not have any significant influence at all, while perceived behavioral control was completely dropped from the model. In addition, subjective norms yielded contrarian results while attitudes exerted significant influence as expected. These findings provide significant theoretical and practical insights in the strategic and tactical directions that various stakeholders involved in social enterprises should take into consideration.