Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 1796: Modeling the Consumers Opinion Influence in Online Social Media in the Case of Eco-friendly Products (Sustainability)

Social influence has a positive impact on the purchase intention for eco-friendly products along with other subjective and objective aspects related to environmental attitude, product attitude, and subjective and objective knowledge. Also, exposure to media has been proven to have a significant positive affect on environmental attitude, with effect on the purchase intention. Several recent studies have shown the importance of consumers’ influence in online social networks, underlying the role played by the online environments over consumers’ attitude. As a result, the current research tries to analyze the influence exerted on consumers’ decision to purchase eco-friendly products by their activity in online social environments. Using a questionnaire, filled-in by 409 respondents, a series of variables have been extracted with regard to the eco-friendly products. An agent-based model has been created, fed with the values of the variables extracted from the questionnaire, and used for simulations. As a result, it has been observed that an increase in online media exposure can have a high positive impact on the eco-friendly product adoption. Depending on the type of product—soft or durable good—different times for the eco-friendly product adoption have been determined relatively to the considered variables. Last, the possible limitations of using an agent-based modeling approach are discussed, along with possible extensions and improvements.