Toward a knowledge economy: Factors affecting the sustainable consumption behavior in the Chinese online education industry

Introduction Buoyed by recent calls to research and advance the knowledge economy and sustainable development. This study explains how the role of the knowledge economy in influencing the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged with numerous opportunities for the global E-learning or online education industry. And, knowledge sharing behavior has been hugely driven by various sharing platforms concerning a new paradigm for diversifying education and learning. However, our study is to further extend the understanding and examine the related empirically correlations to deepen online education for sustainable development (OESD). Both advancing theoretical underpinnings and enhancing the online education industry are highly integrated and introduced toward a sustainable pathway. This study brings the perspectives from consumer value, social identity social exchange, and value-attitude-behavior to explain sustainable consumption behavior in the Chinese online education industry (SCBOEI). Thus, the relationship among factors in this study is statistically examined and the SCBOEI model as the new theoretical insight is introduced in a way of sustainable consumption behaviors in the Chinese online education industry. Finally, this study addresses managerial implications to practitioners, the government, universities, and markets. Materials and methods Employing a quantitative approach, about 559 valid questionnaire surveys are collected from Chinese higher education institutions. This study includes participants from four controlling variables (age, education level, family income, and gender) and six latent variables. The bootstrapping method was applied to validate mediating factors and their interacting relationships. Results The finding reveals that a set of classic psychological theories related fits the SCBOEI in higher education from the consumer value, contextual factors, social identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement to explain SCBOEI. The mediating role of identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement is highly concerned. The value and contextual factors directly make impact on SCBOEI through identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement. Implications The study significantly contributes to enriching the theoretical bases for advancing the literature on sustainable consumption behavior and online education. Our research provides managerial insights into government policy about the online education industry and marketers to set more advertisements to wake awareness of SCBOEI. Furthermore, higher education institutions should encourage their employees and students to participate in SCBOEI actively. All the stakeholders are essential to lead the consumer to SCBOEI by shaping their internal psychology while paying more attention to social equality (education, gender), responsible consumption, and decent economic development. Overall, addressing these issues will help to provide scholars with novel theoretical insights and practitioners with managerial advice.