The relationship between Facebook users’ motivation on environmental issues, environmental awareness and behavioral tendency in Vietnam

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study the Facebook users’ motivation on environmental issues, their environmental awareness and behavioral tendency in Vietnam and to explore the relationship among these three variables. Three social media influencers who had more than 10,000 followers on their Facebook profiles, demonstrated open, explicit environmentally-friendly lifestyle and achieved certain media recognition were invited to join in-depth interviews. Four hundred and fifty eight Vietnamese male and female respondents, aged between 18 and 45 years old and currently residing in Vietnam, were asked to complete an online and offline questionnaire survey. The results depicted that the respondents had a positive opinion on Facebook users’ motivation on environmental issues (M = 3.326), with interesting contents receiving the highest score (M = 3.629) and the size of follower range receiving the lowest overall score (M = 2.745). Moreover, the respondents had a positive attitude towards the environmental awareness (M = 4.1689) and highly concern about waste problem (M = 4.502). Furthermore, the respondents had a positive attitude towards the behavioral tendency (M = 3.6463) and strongly care about the alignment between a brand and its action in being environmentally-friendly (M = 4.218). In regard to the relationship among the variables, the research results demonstrated that Facebook users’ motivation environmental issues is positively related with the respondents’ environmental awareness (r = .441) and environmental awareness is positively related with the respondents’ behavioral tendency (r = .580)