Consumers’ reasonings for intention to purchase natural personal care products in Indonesian market

Abstract

This study investigates Indonesian consumers’ intention to purchase natural personal care products (PCP) using behavioral reasoning theory (BRT). Structural equation modelling (SEM) from online survey method is carried out and reveals that environmental concerns and health consciousness are positively related to reasons for consuming natural PCP and to consumer attitudes. Further, consumers’ attitudes towards natural PCP have been proven to positively influence their purchase intention. On the contrary, reasons against consuming natural PCP have no association with health consciousness, environmental concerns, and attitudes. To deepen the research analysis, the mediating effect of reasonings on the relationship between values and attitudes was also considered. However, only reasons for consuming natural PCP have a mediating effect. The results of this study prove that the intention of Indonesian consumers to buy environmentally friendly natural PCP can be increased by using the right strategy. Furthermore, this research reveals the most appropriate promotion and communication strategies to increase this intention.

Keywords:

• natural personal care products (PCP)
• behavioral reasoning theory (BRT)
• environmental concerns
• health consciousness

1. Introduction

In recent years, consumers’ interest in natural and organic products is increasing due to lifestyle changes induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Several categories of natural and organic products that are currently being targeted include food (Smiglak-Krajewska & Wojciechowska-Solis, 2021), cleaning products (Koksoy Vayisoglu & Oncu, 2021) and medicines (Ahmed et al., 2020). Besides the factors of lifestyle changes and COVID-19, the rising awareness of sustainability issues also makes consumers consciously decide on natural products, which they believe can help reduce their carbon footprint (Moscato & Machin, 2017). Consumers associate natural products to be safer, healthier, better quality, local, and trustworthy. In fact, according to FMCG Gurus (2022), the rising awareness of natural products across the Asia Pacific region as the world’s largest market, has driven consumers to purchase products that are considered natural.

Consumers’ interest in organic and healthy products has sparked academic interest in this topic. Although there are many product categories as research objects, existing literature mainly focuses on organic foods (Amos et al., 2019; Dangi et al., 2020; Hansmann et al., 2020; Ryan & Casidy, 2018). There is little research on consumer buying behavior regarding personal care products. Whereas, just like food, personal care products are a daily necessity used by people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and economic class. Personal care products are defined as products that individuals use to maintain their cleanliness and physical appearance with the intent to improve personal health and well-being (Shaaban & Alhajri, 2020). According to Ghazali et al. (2017), personal care products (PCP) consist of hair care, skin care, oral care, deodorants, toiletries, color cosmetics, and feminine hygiene products.

Conventional PCPs are usually manufactured using certain chemicals that may cause negative effects on the wearer such as skin rashes, eye irritation, nose and throat infections, and cancer in certain cases (Shaaban & Alhajri, 2020). For this reason, natural PCP is considered as a safer option by consumers. In fact, the global natural PCP market size in 2021 was worth USD 19.3 billion and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.1% from 2022 to 2030 (Grand View Research, 2022). One of the countries with a huge market potential for PCP is Indonesia. The increasing awareness on health and beauty in Indonesia, as well as the population of approximately 270 million with high purchasing power, are some of the reasons for PCP growth. Based on research conducted by GlobalData (2019), the size of beauty and personal care market in Indonesia in 2018 was IDR 7.3 trillion (approximately US$ 5 billion) and is expected to continue to increase until in 2023, where it is estimated to reach IDR 10.51 trillion (approximately US$ 7 billion). This is strengthened by the fact that many Indonesian consumers recognize the dangers of chemicals and plastics in the PCP they consume (Lim, 2019). As a result, health-concerned consumers tend to prefer eco-friendly, organic, and natural PCP over conventional PCP. Natural PCP has a chance to draw in more customers because of Indonesia’s growing health trend and environmental protection movement.

Consumers choose natural PCP for several reasons, including mental satisfaction (Sinha & Verma, 2020); improved health; and a reduction in harmful environmental consequences, and to avoid the drawbacks of using conventional PCP (Binninger, 2015). The major focus of this study is how consumers perceive natural PCP to be healthy and ecologically friendly among all these factors because natural PCP is considered to contain only natural ingredients and is free from artificial additives, ingredients, and colouring (Siegrist & Sütterlin, 2017). As acknowledged by Manová et al. (2013), these perceptions are the main cause of the increased demand in natural PCP.

Despite the popularity of natural PCP components and the numerous advantages these products offer, few people really utilize them. Some reasons behind this action are mistrust (Nielsen, 2022); perceived risks (Binninger, 2015), lack of product knowledge (Galati et al., 2019), and lack of convenience (Zhang & Zhou, 2019). In other words, individuals have just as many reasons not to use natural PCP as they do to use it. Therefore, it is crucial to consider both causes.

This study aims to investigate the purchase intention of natural PCP in Indonesian context using behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) developed by Westaby (2005) and Claudy et al. (2013). Even though there are several other behavioral theories, BRT offers various advantages over them. First, BRT includes two measures of reasoning process (“reasons for” and “reasons against”) that provide better explanations of human behavior and decision-making process. According to Sahu et al. (2021), both reasons (“reasons for” and “reasons against”), can influence consumers’ intention and actual behavior. Second, there has been a lot of research to understand environmentally friendly behavior based on this theory, such as renewable energy systems (Claudy et al., 2013), organic food (Ryan & Casidy, 2018), and natural products (Sreen et al., 2021). Third, BRT emphasizes the importance of values in influencing reasons, attitudes and ultimately behavior. Given those reasons and the nature of variables under study, this study affirms that BRT is the appropriate theory.

There have been many studies on consumer purchase intentions for environmentally friendly products using BRT. However, previous studies have not used this theory to research PCP product categories. In addition, the authors also found that there had not been any research on natural PCP sampled in developing nations, such as Indonesia. Whereas, as previously explained, the purchasing intention of the Indonesian towards this product category continues to grow every year. This study aims to fill these research gaps by also adding two specific values (health awareness and environmental concern) as independent variables, not one general value as in previous studies (Ryan & Casidy, 2018; Sreen et al., 2021; Tandon et al., 2020a), because health awareness and environmental concerns are becoming major issues in consumption this century (Moscato & Machin, 2017).

Based on the previous discussion, this research proposes the following research question (RQ):

RQ1:

Do consumers’ values (environmental concerns and health consciousness) influence their reasons for and against buying natural PCP?

RQ2:

Do reasons (for and against) act as mediators for the relationship between values and attitude?

RQ3:

Does the attitude of Indonesian consumers towards PCP will affect their purchase intention?

2. Literature review and hypothesis development

2.1. Natural PCP

According to the GMO Research (2021), cosmetics made from natural and organic ingredients are gaining popularity among consumers in Asia-Pacific. Healthy lives and the need for natural PCPs are being fueled by rising health concerns, environmentally conscious customers, and growing knowledge of the hazards of synthetic chemicals. The need for a more acceptable personal image and increased knowledge of personal cleanliness are the key motivators for Asian consumers (Research and Markets, 2022). In general, personal care products (PCP) are hygiene products which are rinsed after use, such as soap, shampoo, and toothpaste (Ray et al., 2020). Natural PCP is considered to contain only natural ingredients (Moscato & Machin, 2017) and without chemicals (Midmore et al., 2005). These criteria make natural PCP a healthier option than conventional PCP. In fact, natural ingredients in PCP are not something new. Cosmetics (as part of PCP) made from natural ingredients have long been used by humans to improve their appearance and sanitation (Chaudhri & Jain, 2009; Draelos, 2000), such as aloe vera, green tea, shea butter, and tea tree oil. Natural ingredients also include natural minerals and animal-derived ingredients, such as squalene (Boon et al., 2020).

The use of the phrase “natural” in goods packaging is sometimes viewed primarily as a marketing technique because there is currently no precise regulation on what constitutes “natural” at the PCP and policymakers have cited difficulties in defining it (Berry et al., 2017; Petty, 2015). This means even products containing fewer natural ingredients and more synthetic ingredients can claim to be natural (Boon et al., 2020). This confusion has led to increasing consumer distrust of “natural” labels in products (Chen & Chang, 2012). Consumer mistrust of “natural” goods labelling has grown because of this misconception (Chen & Chang, 2012). Despite these circumstances, natural PCP has become a popular fad in recent years, largely because of the pandemic. Research on natural PCP products is currently quite limited compared to that on organic items, especially food. Thus, this work brings up a little-explored subject that needs more study.

2.2. BRT theory

According to Ertz et al. (2016), the application of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control to predict consumer intentions and behavior often result in attitude-intention-behavior gaps, therefore it is necessary to examine context-specific variables to address them. Westaby (2005) introduced the advanced behavioral intention model which offers new and possible explanations for this attitude-behavior gap. This model is known as Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT) which consists of four components: values, reasons, attitudes, and intentions/behaviors. The addition of “reasons” in BRT is considered to provide a complete understanding of decision-making and human behavior.

“Reasons” are defined as the subjective factors that are used as behavioral explanations. It means people have and need reasons that lead them to perform or reject certain behaviors. In this regard, Westaby (2005) categorized the reasons into two groups, namely “reasons for” and “reasons against”. Scholars argued that the “reasons for” rejecting a concept are not always the contrary of the “reasons for” accepting the concept (Claudy et al., 2015; Sahu et al., 2021). For example, the “reasons for” consuming natural food could be health consciousness while “reasons against” consuming natural food could be high cost. These two reasons cannot be dismissed in order to explain more comprehensive consumer behavior.

Although the use of BRT is still in its growing stages in consumer behavior studies, several scholars have used BRT in different topics, i.e. excessive alcohol usage (Norman et al., 2012), customer perception of innovation (Claudy et al., 2013, 2015), mobile banking adoption (Gupta & Arora, 2017), organic food (Tandon et al., 2020b), and e-waste recycling behavior (Yadav et al., 2022). By extending BRT, this study seeks to understand how customers’ psychological processes function in the presence of natural PCP. By considering health and environmental values as indicators of user values, this study expands on the original BRT research. Furthermore, there is no preceding literature that used BRT to justify the benefits and drawbacks of ingesting natural PCP. Therefore, the authors think that BRT is the best theory to use for this investigation.

2.3. Attitude and purchase intention

Many previous studies suggested that consumer attitudes are the key to predicting consumer intentions, which in turn predicts actual behaviors. For example, several studies on organic food revealed that favourable attitudes were associated with increased purchase intention (Ashraf et al., 2019; Yadav & Pathak, 2016). In BRT, intention is assumed to be closely related to behavior (Westaby, 2005). This association is also seen in other research models and empirical evidence (Ajzen, 2001; Wanberg et al., 2005; Westaby et al., 2010). Moreover, several studies revealed the association between consumers’ attitude and intention in a sustainable consumption area. For example, Dilotsotlhe and Akbari (2021) found that attitude influences green buying behavior intention. Similarly, research by Joshi and Rahman (2017) showed that attitudes towards sustainable purchasing predict sustainable buying behavior. However, research on customer intentions to buy natural PCP in developing countries like Indonesia is still quite scarce. This investigation suggested the following hypothesis:

H1:

Consumers’ attitudes towards natural PCP will positively influence their intention to purchase natural PCP.

2.4. Role of reasons (reasons for and reasons against)

Reasons are variables in context-specific circumstances that differentiate BRT from other theories of reason (Westaby, 2005). People use reasons to make decisions and explain their behavior with confidence (Westaby, 2002). Furthermore, according to Myyry et al. (2009), individuals’ reasoning shapes their attitude. Several literatures have proved the relationship between reasons and attitudes in various themes, such as e-waste (Dhir et al., 2020), and innovative new products (An et al., 2021). Specifically, some studies showed that “reasons for” positively influence attitudes, while “reasons against” negatively influence them (Sreen et al., 2021; Tandon et al., 2020b; Wang et al., 2021).

However, the association between “reasons for” and “reasons against” consuming natural goods in the context of natural PCP research is not well supported. Thus, this study contends that consumer reasoning significantly affects attitudes, which is consistent with the BRT approach. Seeing this, the study suggests that “reasons for” (or “reasons against”) using natural PCP will favorably (or negatively) connect to attitude toward natural PCP.

H2a:

Consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP will positively relate to their attitude toward natural PCP.

H2b:

Consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP will negatively relate to their attitude toward natural PCP.

2.5. Values

Claudy et al. (2013) suggested that in BRT, reasoning does not occur separately from values. In several studies, values have been shown to have a positive relationship with attitudes toward certain behaviors. For example, value was found to influence consumers’ attitudes regarding green hotels (Rahman & Reynolds, 2016) and green purchase intentions (Sreen et al., 2018). This study suggests that the two most appropriate values to be studied are environmental concerns and health consciousness. This argument is in accordance with B DiPietro et al. (2013) and Poulston and Yiu (2011) who claimed that the main drivers of consumers’ organic food consumption are related to environmental concerns and health awareness. In addition, Moscato and Machin (2017) also claimed that consumption patterns in this century are usually related to health issues and environmental sustainability.

2.5.1. Environmental concerns

Concerns about the possible harm that chemicals in consumer products could do to the environment have been raised frequently. They served as the catalyst for the current trend toward a healthy lifestyle that mainly emphasizes using natural products for personal care. The natural ingredients or elements in natural PCP are often believed to be more environmentally friendly compared to conventional ones (Moscato & Machin, 2017). Consumers who put a high value on environmental concerns tend to buy environmental-friendly products to show this value. Environmental concerns refer to individuals’ awareness of environmental issues, their beliefs that adopting particular behaviors can help solve these issues, and their willingness to act on these behaviors (Kumar et al., 2021). Thus, concern for the environment is expected to influence individuals to carry out environment-friendly behaviors, such as using natural PCP. In their study, Chambers et al. (2018) proved that environmentally concerned consumers prefer consuming natural food than conventional ones. Meanwhile, the results from Talwar et al. (2021) found that consumer concerns about the impact of human actions on the environment do not make them think better about natural food products. Nevertheless, since natural PCP is regarded as an environmentally friendly product, authors argue that consumers will still be influenced by this value. On the other side, a number of issues, including inconsistent product standards, false “natural” claims, and skepticism about the rating standards for these products, frequently weaken consumers’ belief in natural products, making them less likely to purchase them (Yadav & Pathak, 2016). Consequently, this study argues that consumers’ environmental concerns may affect both the “reasons for” and “reasons against” of natural PCP. Based on this argument, this study proposes the following hypotheses:

H3a:

Environmental concerns will positively influence consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP

H3b:

Environmental concerns will negatively influence consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP

Westaby (2005) revealed that attitudes are influenced by reasoning and also by values. According to earlier research, consumers’ perceptions about organic and ecologically friendly items are influenced by their environmental concerns. For example, environmental concerns evidently had a significant positive relationship with organic attitudes (Smith & Paladino, 2010) and intention to purchase organic food (Yadav & Pathak, 2016). Moreover, the study results from Ghazali et al. (2017) showed that environmental concerns are the highest correlated variable which positively affects consumers’ attitude towards organic PCP. Hence, this study argues:

H4:

Environmental concerns will positively influence consumers’ attitudes towards natural PCP

2.5.2. Health consciousness

Previous research has shown that health benefits such as maintaining and improving health are the main motives that encourage organic products consumption (Xie et al., 2015). It means consumers who are health-conscious prefer to buy organic products as part of their health improvement (Bazzani et al., 2019). In this study, health consciousness refers to consumers’ understanding of their changing health status and the emphasis on health as a top priority in their lives. Doval et al. (2013) mentioned that consumers who are very concerned about health in consuming products may give a high assessment of product ingredients before consuming, compared to those who have low health consciousness. Previous studies in developing countries have also suggested that health consciousness significantly influences purchase intention for organic food (Pham et al., 2019) and natural PCP (Kumar et al., 2021). Besides affecting purchase intention, health consciousness was also said to influence “reasons for” and “reasons against” consuming natural products (Sreen et al., 2021) and organic food (Tandon et al., 2020a). The authors assume that consumers with high level of health consciousness will have the stronger reasons for consuming natural PCP and weaker reasons against consuming natural PCP. Thus, this study proposes the following:

H5a:

Health consciousness will positively influence consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP

H5b:

Health consciousness will negatively influence consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP

The Values-Attitude-Behavior theory by Nguyen et al. (2016) suggested that values act as precedents for attitudes. Long-standing research by GOULD (1988) has shown that health consciousness affects consumer attitudes. Values have also been found to influence users’ attitudes with respect to green hotels (Rahman & Reynolds, 2016) and natural products (Sreen et al., 2021). Based on this literature review, the study found out that health-conscious consumers are more likely to have positive attitudes toward natural PCP. So, the next hypothesis is:

H6:

Health consciousness will positively influence consumers’ attitudes towards natural PCP

From the literature review discussed above, the research model for this study can be seen as in Figure 1. To summarize, using the BRT framework proposed by Claudy et al. (2015), this study assumes that environmental concerns and health consciousness are factors that influence natural PCP consumption intentions through attitudes and reasons for consuming natural PCP. The mediation effect of “reasons for” and “reasons against” were also tested.

Figure 1. Proposed research model.

3. Methods

Data were gathered utilizing a questionnaire survey of respondents in Indonesia to test the research assumptions. Social media and text messaging were used to distribute the survey. These two media were chosen by the authors with the aim of spreading the survey more thoroughly and quickly because everyone without exception can access social media while text messaging was more intended for respondents who do not have social media accounts. Based on reliability and validity tests, a pilot study was done with the first 30 respondents, and a few small changes were made to the number of questions. At the outset of the survey, it was specified which product categories are included in personal care goods in order to prevent respondents from being confused. Respondents were told that there were no right or wrong responses, so they were free to reply in accordance with the circumstances to prevent data bias. Since the survey was distributed massively via social media, it was not known with certainty how many respondents were reached, however, as many as 240 data were received by the authors. All questionnaires returned to the authors were fully filled in and the data could be used for further processing. This number of samples is considered sufficient according to the minimum R-squared method (Hair et al., 2014). The minimum R-squared method reveals that minimum sample size estimation in PLS-SEM can be determined by looking at the number of arrows in the construct and the minimum R-squared value then finding the closest value listed in the table. Based on these results, the minimum sample size for this study is 181 data.

The survey’s questions were created using data from several earlier surveys. The language of the item was slightly altered to fit the context and goal of this study. The respondents’ demographic data was asked in the first section. The second section focused on respondents’ values, measured using 4 items for environmental concerns (EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4) by Preuit and Yan (2016) and 4 items for health consciousness (HC1, HC2, HC3, HC4) by GOULD (1988). The third part focused on “reasons for” and “reasons against” from Sreen et al. (2021) and Westaby (2005) and measured using 10 items (RF1, RF2, RF3, RF4, RF5, RA1, RA2, RA3, RA4, RA5). Four items (ATT1, ATT2, ATT3, ATT4) from Sreen et al. (2021) and Han et al. (2016) measured attitude towards natural PCP as the fourth part of the questionnaire. The last part is concerned about purchase intention and the 4 items (PI1, PI2, PI3, PI4), taken from Ghazali et al. (2017) and Hsu et al. (2017). A five-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) were used to measure the items in the questionnaire.

Indonesians between the ages of 18 and over 40 make up the study’s population. A non-probabilistic and purposeful sampling is used in this investigation. People who are 18 and older were selected because they represent people who can make personal care purchases using their own judgment. The study employed a structural model to assess the presented hypotheses based on the conceptual framework for this study after assessing the descriptive statistics for each variable.

4. Results and discussion

The consumers’ demographic is presented in Table 1. Women made up the majority of the 240 responders, with 157 women (65.4%) and 83 men (34.6%) respectively. According to age distribution, most respondents are in the age group of 18–23 (34.6%) and older than 40 years old (31.7%). When it comes to education, the majority of respondents fall into one of two main categories: high school (42.1%) or bachelor’s degree (42.5%). Additionally, 35.8% of the respondents were students, and the remaining respondents had a variety of work statuses. The findings also showed that women are more interested in consuming organic products than men. Women also proved to be more aware about chemical residues (Yiridoe et al., 2005). Most respondents were between the ages of 18 and 29, which is consistent with US data showing that 50% of Americans in that age range solely use natural care products (Shafira & Mayangsari, 2017).

Table 1. Respondents’ demographic

	Demographic	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Men	83	34.6
	Women	157	65.4
Total		240	100.00
Age group	18–23	83	34.6
	24–29	17	7.1
	30–35	53	22.1
	36–40	11	4.5
	>40	76	31.7
Total		240	100.00
Education level	High school	101	42.1
	Diploma degree	10	4.2
	Bachelor degree	102	42.5
	Master degree	21	8.8
	Doctoral degree	6	2.4
Total		240	100.00
Job status	Student	86	35.8
	Employee	41	17.1
	Entrepreneur	43	17.9
	Housewives	43	17.9
	Other	27	11.3
Total		240	100.00

It is important to note that this study has a theoretical foundation and a measurement scale derived from previous mature theories. After the first run, the factor loading’s results of HC1, RF5, RA1, and RA2 were lower than 0.7. According to Henseler et al. (2012), for a well-fitting reflective model, path loadings should be above 0.7. Thus, this study dropped those items for the second running data. In the second running data (Table 2), all factor loading values were higher than 0.70, indicating that all items were good measures of each construct. The construct reliability of the study was also proven because the composite reliability (CR) values of the construct were greater than 0.70 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Next, the convergent validity of the measures was confirmed by the value of the average variance extracted (AVE) as all study constructs exceeded 0.50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Lastly, the discriminant validity of the scale was evaluated using the heterotrait—monotrait ratio (HTMT). According to Hair et al. (2016), all HTMT values must be lower than 0.90 to be said as valid. Based on Table 3, the measurement model of this research was confirmed valid. In conclusion, the model of this research is reliable and valid.

Table 2. Constructs, items, descriptive statistics, and measurement model results

Constructs and items	FL	CR	AVE
Environmental concerns		0.878	0.643
EC1: I think about the environmental impacts of my PCP when I am shopping	0.810
EC2: The future well-being of the planet is important to me	0.772
EC3: I think that my actions can make a difference to the health of the planet	0.802
EC4: I am a person who cares about the environment	0.822
Health consciousness		0.924	0.803
HC1: I reflect on my health a lot^*)	-
HC2: I’m very self-conscious about my health	0.859
HC3: I’m alert to changes in my health	0.869
HC4: I’m usually aware of my health	0.818
Reasons for consuming natural PCP		0.877	0.641
RF1: Natural PCP contain no additives	0.775
RF2: Natural PCP contain no artificial ingredients	0.802
RF3: Natural PCP are good to my health	0.804
RF4: Natural PCP contain natural ingredients	0.792
RF5: Natural PCP are conveniently available^*)	-
Reasons against consuming natural PCP		0.869	0.743
RA1: I have doubts about “natural” product labeling^*)	-
RA2: I fear that all of the natural products claiming to be natural are not actually natural^*)	-
RA3: It is hard to determine the authenticity of natural PCP	0.802
RA4: It is difficult to confirm if natural PCP are chemical-free	0.833
RA5: It is difficult to confirm if natural PCP contain only natural ingredients	0.845
Attitude towards natural PCP		0.893	0.676
ATT1: Using natural PCP is good	0.827
ATT2: Using natural PCP is pleasant	0.850
ATT3: I have a positive feeling when buying natural PCP	0.849
ATT4: I am interested in knowing more about natural PCP	0.757
Purchase intention		0.914	0.728
PI1: I intend to buy natural PCP in the future	0.848
PI2: I am likely to buy natural PCP	0.885
PI3: Next time I shall need PCP, I will buy a natural one	0.879
PI4: I will buy natural PCP as soon as I run out of the PCP I am currently using	0.798

Note(s): ^*) Item deleted in the validation process; FL: factor loading; CR: composite reliability; AVE: average variance extracted.

Table 3. Heterotrait—monotrait ratio results

	ATT	EC	HC	PI	RA	RF
ATT
EC	0.494
HC	0.418	0.294
PI	0.870	0.533	0.451
RA	0.310	0.072	0.077	0.250
RF	0.647	0.441	0.283	0.572	0.162

Table 4 shows the results of the structural model testing. The results indicated that H1, H2a, H3a, H4, and H5a, H6 were supported, whereas H2b, H3b and H5b were not. Attitude towards natural PCP positively affects purchase intention of natural PCP (β values = 0.747, t statistics = 15.760, p-value = 0.000), thus H1 was supported. While consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP are proven to have positive relationship with the attitude toward natural PCP, consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP turned out to have the same result. This is not in accordance with the hypothesis which predicts that “reasons against” should have a significant negative effect on attitude. So H2a is confirmed, but H2b is rejected.

Table 4. Hypotheses results

Hypothesis	β values	P values	Results
H1 (+): Attitude towards natural PCP -> Purchase intention	0.747	0.000	Supported
H2a (+): Reasons for consuming natural PCP -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.406	0.000	Supported
H2b (-): Reasons against consuming natural PCP -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.206	0.000	Not supported
H3a (+): Environmental concerns -> Reasons for consuming natural PCP	0.337	0.000	Supported
H3b (-): Environmental concerns -> Reasons against consuming natural PCP	−0.074	0.170	Not supported
H4 (+): Environmental concerns -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.224	0.000	Supported
H5a (+): Health consciousness -> Reasons for consuming natural PCP	0.167	0.002	Supported
H5b (-): Health consciousness -> Reasons against consuming natural PCP	0.081	0.149	Not supported
H6 (+): Health consciousness -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.188	0.001	Supported

The result of the study which indicate that attitude positively impacts purchase intention (H1) is in line with the findings of Prakash et al. (2019). A possible explanation for this finding could be that consumers perceive certain behaviours, such as consuming natural PCP, to be rewarding (Jaiswal & Kant, 2018) thus the positive attitude will lead to a stronger purchase intention. Reasons for consuming natural PCP were also positively associated with attitude (H2a), as hypothesized. The findings of this study validate some results from previous studies (Claudy et al., 2015; Gupta & Arora, 2017), i.e., the reasons for consuming natural PCP that lead to positive attitudes include no additives, no artificial ingredients, good for health, contain natural ingredients and conveniently available. It is also in accordance with the results of the findings by Siegrist and Sütterlin (2017). However, reasons against consuming natural PCP were not found to have a negative association with attitude, as proposed (H2b). This means that even if consumers have hesitancy regarding natural PCP, this does not hinder their positive attitude towards the product. Many previous studies also have shown the same findings (Claudy et al., 2015; Dhir et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). In addition, consumers may have reasons against natural PCP other than those examined in this study.

H3a of the study proposed that environmental concerns will positively influence consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP which was supported by the result (β values = 0.337, t statistics = 4.868, p-value = 0.000). Environmental concerns also positively influence attitude towards natural PCP consumption (β values = 0.224, t statistics = 3.645, p-value = 0.000) which means that H4 was also supported. However, H3b, which proposed that environmental concerns will negatively influence consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP, was not supported by the result (β values = −0.074, t statistics = 0.955, p-value = 0.170).

This research shows that the higher the environmental concern value that consumers have, the higher the reasons for them to consume natural PCP (H3a), which is in accordance with the research by Amberg and Fogarassy (2019). On the other hand, this high environmental concern value does not weaken consumers’ doubts about natural “claims” in natural PCP (H3b). Thus, consumers may care about the environment and consume natural PCP but still have doubts about this product. Another possibility is that there are other values that consumers have that can make them not hesitate to consume natural PCP.

H5a which proposed that health consciousness will positively influence consumers’ reasons for consuming natural PCP was supported (β values = 0.167, t statistics = 2.932, p-value = 0.002), while H5b which proposed that health consciousness will negatively influence consumers’ reasons against consuming natural PCP was not supported by the result because it is not significant (β values = 0.081, t statistics = 1.041, p-value = 0.149). The last hypothesis (H6) proposed that health consciousness will have a positive influence towards consumers’ attitudes, and the result supported this proposition (β values = 0.188, t statistics = 3.059, p-value = 0.001).

The results showed that the higher the consumer’s health awareness, the higher the reason for consuming natural PCP (H5a). However, similar to the value of environmental concerns, the value of health awareness does not seem to reduce consumers’ doubts about natural PCP. This is in accordance with the results of research by Sreen et al. (2021) who also conducted research on natural products. Based on these results it can be concluded that the high value of environmental and health awareness does not directly reduce consumers’ reasons for not consuming natural PCP. The rejection of both H3b and H5b indicates that consumers may still buy the natural personal care products despite acknowledging the risks associated with the products, such as the ingredients and authenticity. This is in line with the research result from Kumar et al. (2021). Moreover, as the BRT argument explained earlier, “reasons for” consuming something may not be the same as “reasons against” consuming it.

Finally, authors performed a mediation test of this research model to check its robustness. Since this study uses SmartPLS 3.2.9, the mediation effect can be analyzed by calculating the Variance Accounted For (VAF) score. The results of the mediation are shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Effects of consumer reasons for on attitude towards natural PCP

	Direct effect	Indirect effect	Total effect	VAF (Total effect/ indirect effect)	Result
Environmental concerns -> Reasons for consuming natural PCP -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.224	0.137	0.361	0.379	Partially mediated
Health consciousness -> Reasons for consuming natural PCP -> Attitude towards natural PCP	0.188	0.068	0.256	0.266	Partially mediated

Based on the calculation of VAF, the effect of reasons for consuming natural PCP as a mediator between environmental concerns and attitude towards natural PCP is 0.379 or 37.9%. The table shows the effect of reasons for consuming natural PCP as a mediator between health consciousness and attitude towards natural PCP is 0.266 or 26.6%. From the results, it can be concluded that the “reasons for” consuming natural PCP has a partial mediating effect (Hair et al., 2016), and there are other possible intervening variables which are not examined in this study.

5. Implications

This study makes three main contributions to theoretical advances in this area. First, it adds to the existing empirical evidence using BRT as a theoretical framework. Specifically, this is the first research that uses BRT to investigate the intention to buy natural PCP. In addition, this study tested the mediating effect of reasoning on attitudes as suggested by Aschemann-Witzel and Niebuhr Aagaard (2014). Second, unlike other studies that only use one value as a predictor (Gupta & Arora, 2017; Tandon et al., 2020b), this study uses two values so that it is more comprehensive and gives deeper understanding. Third, this study adds to the literature on natural personal care product research. As some of the literature focus on organic products, such as organic food (Ryan & Casidy, 2018), organic/eco-friendly cosmetics (Sadiq et al., 2020), and organic skincare (Ghazali et al., 2017) while others focus on natural products in general (Sreen et al., 2021), this study focuses on natural PCP. Accordingly, it is the first study of its nature in the context of natural PCP in the Indonesian area.

There are three key managerial and practical implications from this study findings. Firstly, this study found health consciousness and environmental concerns to be important antecedents for increasing positive attitude towards natural PCP, as it enhances the reasons for consuming them. Eventually, the reasons for consuming natural PCP have a direct influence on consumers’ attitude toward natural PCP. Based on these findings, authors recommend that companies clearly communicate health and environmental advantages of using natural PCPs through their promotions.

Secondly, this study suggests that managers can emphasize the good things from natural PCP such as being free from additives, free from harmful chemicals, and consisting only of natural ingredients, to increase a positive attitude for these products. This suggestion is supported from the results of this study, mainly for consumers to positively evaluate natural PCP that could increase consumers’ purchase intentions. For example, the manufacturers of these products should design labels to highlight the attributes of these products. Moreover, the materials of natural PCP packaging must also be environmentally friendly and written on the part that can be easily noticed by consumers. These product labels could help consumers develop positive attitudes towards products and make informed decisions at the time of purchase.

Moreover, for more effective results, organizations and firms should promote sustainable consumption, such as using natural PCPs, as something that directly benefits society (Abdulrazak & Quoquab, 2017). Especially in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, where the spirit of togetherness and cooperation is still very high. One way is to involve local people in the supply chain, from farmers to office workers. Giving consumers an idea of their contribution every time they buy natural PCP products will be very meaningful for the welfare of the environment and the lives of residents.

6. Conclusions and limitations

The objective of this study was to investigate the purchase intention of natural PCP using BRT as the theoretical framework and collect empirical evidence from 240 respondents in Indonesia for analysis. To address RQ1, this study investigated the associations between consumers’ values (environmental concerns and health consciousness) and consumers’ reasonings (for and against) towards natural PCP. The results show that both consumers’ values have a positive impact on the reasons for purchasing natural PCP, but do not have any impact on the reasons against purchasing natural PCP.

This study performed a mediation analysis with consumers’ reasonings (for and against) as mediating variables to answer RQ2. The result reveals that reasons for purchasing natural PCP partially mediated the association between values and attitude towards natural PCP. Unlike the “reasons for”, the result of this study shows that “reasons against” consuming natural PCP are not significantly related to attitude towards this product.

Lastly, to resolve RQ3, the analysis for the relationship between attitude and purchase intention concluded that attitude has a positive and significant effect on the purchase intention of natural PCP. To increase purchase intention of natural PCP, companies must increase the positive attitudes towards this specific product category. This is consistent with the results in previous studies with a different product category (Shaikh & Karjaluoto, 2015).

While this research contributes to the literature by broadening the theoretical perspective of BRT to explain the drivers of intention to purchase natural PCP, there are some limitations that could be addressed in future research. First, the attention of this study is solely purchasing intention. Although intention is a strong pre-requisite of actual behavior, measuring consumers’ actual behavior will provide deeper insights. It is recommended that future researchers pay more attention to the actual buying behavior of natural PCP. Second, this study only includes two types of consumer values as predictors. However, there are other types of values such as “creativity”, “hedonic value”, “utilitarian value”, “spirituality”, which could be important predictors of consumer attitudes and intentions. Adding those values in future research will be necessary to obtain a complete picture of this topic. Third, the object of this research is all personal care products made from natural ingredients. The authors highly recommend future studies to replicate this research model with other, more specific products such as skincare, body care, or non-personal care products such as food. Fourth, given that the geographical area of this research is limited to Indonesia, there is a possibility that different nations may yield different results. Therefore, for further research, it is recommended to expand the scope to include comparisons between Indonesia and other countries, as this will produce more reliable results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).