Consumers' awareness of purchasing products with sustainable ecological labels: A field practice in Gaziantep

As the population increases in the world, the natural resources are rapidly decreasing and getting polluted. Over time, the human and natural disasters have caused people to increase their environmental awareness. This situation has contributed to people seeing that the natural resources are not unlimited. For this reason, many manufacturers bring environmental awareness to the forefront and switch to an environmentally friendly production process and try to show that these products are environmental friendly which are issued by governments and private companies. The aim of this study is to determine the opinions of consumers living in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts of Gaziantep on the ecological label symbols of the products and to define consumer awareness about environmentally friendly products. The data collected via questionnaire with 413 consumers who are living in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts of Gaziantep province with at least a vocational school education level were analyzed with SPSS and AMOS program. As a result of the analysis, it has been determined that the consumers have an effect on the environmental awareness and the behavior of purchasing ecologically labeled products. It has been observed that the consumers with a high environmental awareness are more willingly to buy ecologically labeled products.