Green production information transparency and online purchase behavior: Evidence from green agricultural products in China

Abstract

The “lemon effect,” which is the result of information asymmetry and barriers to trust, poses serious challenges to the sustainable development of green agricultural products. Therefore, enhancing consumers’ trust is critical to maintain sustainable purchasing behavior. Information transparency has been widely attention as a marketing tool, and previous research related to agricultural products has focused on the visible information. Based on signaling theory, this study takes an invisible information perspective and empirically investigates how production information transparency of green agricultural products affects consumer trust and online purchasing behavior. The results of structural equation modeling analysis show that production technology information transparency and production means information transparency have different effects on the dimensions of consumer trust (in competence and benevolence). Moreover, trust in competence has a significant positive impact on trust in benevolence; they both have significant impacts on consumers’ online green purchase behavior. The results of this study contribute to signaling theory and the product transparency literature, and offer significant implications to practitioners of the green agricultural sectors.