Green products from industrial symbiosis: Are consumers ready for them?

Industrial symbiosis (IS) can support the transition towards the circular economy: accordingly, wastes produced by a company can be used by other companies as an alternative to raw materials or directly used to create new products, sold on B2C markets. This paper aims at analyzing consumers' perception towards electronic products (e.g., laptops, smartphones, tablets) generated via the IS approach (hereafter mentioned as “IS products”) and understanding which factors influence the consumers' purchase intention and willingness to pay a premium price for them. By relying on the Theory of Planned Behavior integrated with the Theory of Consumers' Decision-Making Process, we study the influence of environmental concern, perceived consumer effectiveness, social influence, perceived safety, functionality expectations, and green perceived utility. A survey was conducted involving 1.224 Italian consumers. Results highlight that perceived consumer effectiveness and social influence positively affect both purchase intention and willingness to pay a premium price for IS products, while green perceived utility, perceived safety, and functionality expectations positively affect only purchase intention. Results of this paper offers to managers insights useful to understand consumers' behavioral intention towards IS products and to develop appropriate production and marketing strategies.