Willingness to pay a premium price for green products: does a reference group matter?

Green consumption is a realistic alternative to relieve the pressure on the environment and resources and realize sustainable development. As an important force affecting individual attitudes and behaviors, a reference group has a significant impact on consumers' purchase evaluation, judgment and decision-making. Unfortunately, the influence of a reference group on the willingness to pay (WTP) a premium price for green products is still unclear. In addition, environmental awareness is defined as the level of understanding and cognition of the environment and environmental protection. How environmental awareness affects the relationship between the influence of a reference group and consumers' WTP a premium price for green products is also a black box. To answer the above questions, this study divides green products into environment-friendly products and resource-conserving products according to their nature and attributes the influence of a reference group to four dimensions: informational influence, utilitarian influence, value-expressive influence and belief-reinforced influence. Then, we systematically investigate how a reference group affects consumers' WTP a premium price for different categories of green products and evaluate the moderating effect of environmental awareness. The empirical results indicate that the influence of the reference group is positively correlated with the WTP a premium price for green products. Meanwhile, environmental awareness significantly strengthens the above relationship.