What Makes Students Pay More for a Greener Planet? Evidence from Bangladesh

When a student in Dhaka decides whether to spend extra taka on an eco-friendly product or support a campus sustainability fee, a complex chain of psychological machinery clicks into gear. A new study published in SN Social Sciences by Sardar Al Imran of BRAC University, together with Shaiya Binte Mahbub and Chathuri Kalpana Weerasinghe, has mapped that machinery in detail, asking what actually drives private university students in Bangladesh to open their wallets for sustainability. The answer, built on a survey of 440 students across three private universities in the capital, is that willingness to pay for sustainability is not a single impulse but the product of knowledge, information flows, social pressure, personal confidence, and habitual behavior working in concert.

The research is grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior, one of the most widely used frameworks in environmental psychology. Developed by Icek Ajzen, the theory holds that human actions are best predicted by three proximal factors: attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, which capture perceived social expectations, and perceived behavioral control, which reflects how easy or difficult a person believes the behavior to be. In this study, the authors extended the classic triad with three additional constructs: environmental knowledge, sources of information, and environmental behavior. The central question was whether these extensions could explain a financially consequential intention, namely the willingness to pay for sustainability, in a developing-country higher-education context where such evidence has been scarce.

Methodologically, the study is a cross-sectional quantitative investigation. Data were gathered from 440 students enrolled at three private universities in Dhaka using structured questionnaires. The analysis pipeline was unusually thorough for a behavioral survey of this kind. The researchers began with preliminary ordinal association tests to check for baseline relationships among variables, then moved to confirmatory factor analysis to verify that the survey items genuinely measured the intended constructs. The heart of the analysis was covariance-based structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that allows researchers to test an entire network of hypothesized cause-and-effect pathways simultaneously rather than one relationship at a time. Mediation analysis was then used to trace whether some variables influence willingness to pay indirectly through others.

Because self-reported survey data are vulnerable to artifacts, the team also ran a battery of validity diagnostics. These included an assessment of common method bias, the risk that correlations arise simply because all answers come from the same respondents at the same time; the HTMT ratio, a modern criterion for checking that conceptually distinct constructs are statistically distinguishable; a cross-loading examination to confirm that each survey item loads most strongly on its own factor; and a statistical power evaluation to ensure the sample size was adequate to detect the effects being tested. This layered approach matters, because findings in consumer behavior research are only as credible as the measurement and modeling safeguards behind them.

The results paint a coherent picture. Sources of information, meaning the channels through which students encounter environmental content, were positively associated with both environmental knowledge and environmental attitudes. In other words, students who are exposed to more and better sustainability information know more about environmental issues and feel more favorably toward pro-environmental action. This finding positions information channels as the upstream infrastructure of the entire psychological chain: before attitudes can form and intentions can crystallize, someone or something has to deliver the relevant knowledge.

Downstream, the study found that environmental behavior, subjective norms, attitudes, and perceived behavioral control all significantly predicted willingness to pay for sustainability. Each of these factors carried independent statistical weight. Students who already acted in environmentally responsible ways, who felt that people around them expected sustainable conduct, who held positive attitudes toward environmental protection, and who believed they had the capacity and opportunity to act sustainably were all more willing to spend money on sustainability. The fact that environmental behavior itself predicted willingness to pay suggests a self-reinforcing loop: practicing sustainability in daily life appears to build a disposition that extends to financial commitments.

The authors are careful about the limits of their model. They describe the extended Theory of Planned Behavior as a useful, though not perfectly fitting, explanation of sustainability-related financial intentions in their sample. This honesty is scientifically important. Behavioral models rarely capture every source of variance in human decisions, and a model that fits acceptably rather than perfectly still provides actionable leverage. In this case, the actionable levers are clear: improve the quality and reach of environmental information, cultivate positive attitudes through education, harness peer and social norms, and strengthen students’ sense of behavioral control.

The context of the study gives these findings particular weight. Bangladesh is one of the countries most exposed to climate change, facing sea-level rise, cyclones, flooding, and severe urban pollution, yet research on sustainability-related consumer psychology in its higher-education sector has been limited. Private university students in Dhaka represent a segment of the population with purchasing power and future leadership roles in business and policy. Understanding what drives their willingness to pay for sustainability therefore has implications far beyond campus boundaries. Prior studies cited in the paper have examined green fees on campuses, willingness to pay for green buildings, carbon offsets, and sustainable food, but context-specific evidence from developing-country universities has remained thin, a gap this study directly addresses.

The findings also connect to a broader international literature on environmental education. Research from Portugal, China, Indonesia, and elsewhere has repeatedly shown that environmental knowledge shapes attitudes, which in turn shape behavior, but the knowledge-action gap, the frequent disconnect between what people know and what they do, remains a persistent puzzle. By demonstrating that information sources feed both knowledge and attitudes, and that actual behavior feeds financial willingness, the Bangladeshi study suggests that interventions should target multiple points in the chain simultaneously rather than relying on knowledge alone. Sustainability curricula, campus campaigns, and media exposure may each contribute differently, and the study’s mediation framework offers a template for evaluating which pathways matter most in a given setting.

For policymakers and university administrators, the practical message is that willingness to pay for sustainability is buildable. It grows when students receive credible environmental information, when their social circles normalize sustainable choices, when their attitudes are shaped by engaging education, and when they experience the confidence that comes from acting sustainably in everyday life. For researchers, the study demonstrates that an extended Theory of Planned Behavior, validated with confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and rigorous bias diagnostics, can travel successfully into a developing-country context and yield interpretable, actionable results. As universities worldwide grapple with how to finance greener campuses and as young consumers increasingly face sustainability-labeled choices in the marketplace, evidence about what makes students willing to pay, and what merely makes them nod in agreement, has never been more valuable.

Subject of Research: Determinants of university students' willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh

Article Title: Determinants of students’ willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh

Article References: Imran, S. A., Mahbub, S. B., & Weerasinghe, C. K. (2026). Determinants of students’ willingness to pay for sustainability in Bangladesh. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 527. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01825-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01825-7

Keywords: willingness to pay, sustainability, Theory of Planned Behavior, environmental knowledge, environmental behavior, higher education, Bangladesh, consumer behavior, environmental attitudes, structural equation modeling, environmental education, subjective norms