Xie Xiangwei, Gong Chunxi, Su Zhenqing, Nie Yufei, Kim Woohyoung
School of Business, Southwest University, Chongqing 402460, China.
The Graduate School of Technology Management, Kyunghee University, Global Campus, Yongin-si 17104, Republic of Korea.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Jul 24;14(8):634. doi: 10.3390/bs14080634.
In an era marked by the expansion of the Internet economy and the intensification of environmental concerns, the convergence of digital finance and green finance has emerged as a significant global trend. China's Alipay Ant Forest, an innovative green financial product, has successfully quantified carbon emission reductions resulting from users' green consumption patterns, establishing the first carbon account-based green financial product and pioneering an innovative "green finance plus gamification" model. However, the academic literature has not fully explained the underlying mechanisms that drive consumer engagement with such green financial products. This study, motivated by the academic question of what factors influence consumers' willingness to use green financial products, employs Ant Forest as a case study and develops a novel structural equation model based on self-determination theory, customer-perceived value, and the technology acceptance model. The model incorporates user type as a control variable and considers autonomy, gamification, and bonuses as key independent variables, with customer-perceived value serving as a mediating variable. Data collection involved 606 participants, enabling a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing users' willingness to engage with green financial products. The findings support the proposed hypothesis, identifying several significant predictors of users' willingness to use green financial products, with the exception of age. This study advances the theoretical understanding of consumer behavior towards green financial products by integrating self-determination theory, customer-perceived value, and the technology acceptance model, while also offering practical insights for marketing strategies. It explores the interface between digital finance, environmental sustainability, and consumer behavior, highlighting opportunities for financial institutions to leverage Internet applications to promote green financial services and enhance their marketing approaches to influence consumer adoption.
在一个以互联网经济扩张和环境问题加剧为特征的时代，数字金融与绿色金融的融合已成为全球显著趋势。中国的支付宝蚂蚁森林作为一款创新型绿色金融产品，成功量化了用户绿色消费模式带来的碳排放减少量，建立了首个基于碳账户的绿色金融产品，并开创了创新的“绿色金融+游戏化”模式。然而，学术文献尚未充分解释驱动消费者参与此类绿色金融产品的潜在机制。本研究受何种因素影响消费者使用绿色金融产品意愿这一学术问题的驱动，以蚂蚁森林为案例研究，并基于自我决定理论、顾客感知价值和技术接受模型开发了一个新颖的结构方程模型。该模型将用户类型作为控制变量，并将自主性、游戏化和奖励视为关键自变量，顾客感知价值作为中介变量。数据收集涉及606名参与者，从而能够全面分析影响用户参与绿色金融产品意愿的因素。研究结果支持了所提出的假设，确定了除年龄外影响用户使用绿色金融产品意愿的几个重要预测因素。本研究通过整合自我决定理论、顾客感知价值和技术接受模型，推进了对消费者绿色金融产品行为的理论理解，同时也为营销策略提供了实践见解。它探索了数字金融、环境可持续性和消费者行为之间的界面，突出了金融机构利用互联网应用推广绿色金融服务并改进其营销方法以影响消费者采用的机会。
