This paper studies how consumers’ psychological factors influence their intentional purchasing behavior towards eco-labeled products and investigates why consumers choose eco-labeled products. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, we develop an extended model including six constructs. Among these constructs, consumers’ intentional purchasing behavior, attitude towards the behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are applied from the original theoretical framework. Health consciousness and environmental awareness are integrated additionally to reflect consumers’ concerns about the natural environment and their health. Next, we conduct and analyze a survey-based empirical study with 336 samples using the Structural Equation Modeling. Our findings show that consumers’ attitude towards the behavior is positively influenced by environmental awareness, but the effects of it on intentional purchasing behavior are insignificant. Also, subjective norm has a positive influence on intentional purchasing behavior, but its effects on attitude towards the behavior are not significant. Moreover, the results also show that the total effects of health consciousness on intentional purchasing behavior are significantly higher than the effects of environmental awareness. Our results can provide a reference for business managers to attract consumers through eco-labeling as well as government policymaking.

An eco-labeling scheme is a method of environmental performance certification that is beneficial for reducing negative environmental impacts and promoting green consumption. Many types of research studies have shown its effectiveness. However, to the best of our knowledge, fewer studies have considered how to supervise and regulate the enterprises after getting certificated. An enterprise may have obtained certification that its product meets the corresponding environmental standards, but without effective supervisions and regulations, it may not continue to implement the standards after being certified. Such behaviors are not only unfavorable to environmental protection, they also harm the eco-labeling scheme. With the consideration that different eco-labeling schemes and standards would result in different interaction relationships among stakeholders, we focus on Chinese Environmental Labeling (CEL), which is a government-sponsored scheme. By utilizing the approach of evolutionary game theory, we built a model including the government agency and enterprise and their strategic interactions. Numerical analyses are applied to verify the modeling analyses and demonstrate the influences of game parameters. Our results indicate that supervisions from the government side are necessary in order for the enterprises to implement the standards, but high supervision costs and low efficiency are the main factors that prevent the government agency from getting more involved. Reducing the executing costs of the enterprises would prompt them to participate more. Additionally, if the government agencies and customers could have a bigger, more positive influence on the enterprises, then the enterprises would likely choose to implement the standards. Our results provide references for the better development of an eco-labeling scheme as well as government environmental policy-making.