Influences of environment perception and social media communication via brand loyalty on the intention to buy green products among Vietnamese youth

Environmental issues are becoming more and more people's concern. One of them is social media, which attracts numerous young people to operate and interact far beyond geographical limits. The purpose of the study is to build a novelty research model by combining the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to measure customer intentions in terms of environmental perception and influencing factors of social media communication through brand loyalty. The authors initially used the ground theory to review literature on previous studies, identified gaps in research, built research models, as well as proposed hypotheses between constructs. The qualitative research method was used in a focus group interview to evaluate and adjust the official questionnaire before measuring the concepts study. The quantitative research method was used after having an official survey and scale with 282 Vietnamese Gen Z to evaluate indicators to measure by SmartPLS software for assessment. This study identified hypotheses about the relationship between electronic word of mouth (EW) and online communities (OC), which have positive effects on brand loyalty (BL), significantly affecting green purchasing intentions (GPI). In addition, the relationships between environmental knowledge (EK), attitude towards green products (AT), subjective norm (SN), electronic word of mouth (EW), online communities (OC), online advertising (OA), and brand loyalty (BL) directly affect the green purchasing intention of Vietnamese Gen Z. The findings of the study will contribute to both scholars and practitioners to a theoretical framework for the impact of environmental perception, social media communication through brand loyalty, and green purchase intention of younger generation consumers.