You are what you eat: Understanding the psychological and ethical motives for organic food consumption

<p>Consumer demand for organic food has been growing tremendously in recent years. This shift towards organic foods is driven not only by their perceived health benefits to consumers but also by increased awareness of their role in mitigating environmental problems arising out of conventional farming. Recent and past food scandals have increased consumer scepticism about widely available conventional food. However, despite increased awareness about potential health and environmental problems from the consumption of conventional food, the market share of organic food globally has remained relatively low at 1%. One explanation for this gap may be the classic attitude-behaviour discrepancy reported in previous studies, making organic food consumption a conundrum for scholars to resolve. There have been fervent calls for understanding the underlying consumer motives and barriers in buying behaviour of organic food. The purpose of this thesis research is to address this conundrum by focusing on the influence of psychological and ethical motives of consumers in organic food consumption. In particular, the psychological aspect focuses on highlighting the role of fear motives and perceived effects of conventional food in adoption of organic food; while the ethical motives aspect captures consumer willingness to adopt organic food due to underlying ethical issues in food production. It is argued that the collective investigation of psychological and ethical motives will facilitate a better understanding of organic food buying behaviour.</p> <p>This study thus utilizes the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), a psychology-based human behavioural theory, and Hunt and Vitell's general theory of marketing ethics (H-V theory), for collective investigation of consumer motives and barriers to organic food. PMT postulates that responses to fearful situations are shaped by the perceptions of risk likelihood and impacts, and the capacity to cope with the perceived risks. PMT employs a wider set of constructs that are capable of addressing individual as well as collective responses. The literature suggests that organic food involves ethical dimensions that encourage consumers to act upon their ethical values while making food choices. In addition to these two theories, this study introduces an organic food literacy perception variable based on consumer attitude, knowledge and perceived behaviour, to address whether consumers have the required knowledge to make healthy and environmentally friendly food purchase decisions. Furthermore, this study uses consumer trust as moderator between purchase intention and purchase behaviour, to reduce the intention-behaviour gap in sustainable food choice. The present study is the first to apply consumer trust in protection motivation research to capture actual behaviour. This unified model will enhance the predictability of organic food buying behaviour, which forms the main motivational basis for the study.</p> <p>This study employs an exploratory mixed methods research design to collect and analyse evidence from Australian consumers. Australia was chosen as the study setting because of its significance with regard to organic food production, ranking first in terms of largest area of certified organic farmland. The data collection was performed in two phases. The first phase of data collection involved netnography, a relatedly underutilised but effective method of data collection that enabled access to a large dataset of consumers' opinions available online. The selection of netnography also helped in reducing the social desirability bias which is commonly present in studies related to sustainable, healthy and environmentally friendly consumption. The results from the netnography study guided the design of a research survey instrument to perform quantitative analysis of the collected evidence, in the second phase of data collection.</p>   <p>The results of this study are consistent with the PMT and H-V theoretical proposition that consumer perceptions of conventional food risks and their adaptive capacity vary with the level of their literacy perception. The capacity to adopt organic food is shown to have played a crucial role in purchase of organic food. Consumers who are more knowledge and show a positive attitude and perceived behaviour are more likely to prefer organic food over conventional food. The perception of conventional food risks and capacity to adopt the desired behaviour were dependent on their attitude, knowledge and perceived behaviour. From an ethical perspective, consumers were morally obliged to prefer organic food and suggested accountability for the violators of ethical considerations in food production. Lastly, consumer trust was found to be a significant moderator between purchase intention and purchase behaviour.</p> <p>This study extends the organic food literature in identifying the importance of psychological and ethical motives in consumer food-related decision making. This study highlights that food choices are not necessarily based on conscious behaviour but also involve unconscious factors. These conscious as well as unconscious factors are well captured by the two cognitive mediating processes entailed in Protection Motivation Theory. This study thus offers guidance to the organic food sector on the importance of ethical issues involved in organic food production. Not all consumers have the same level of awareness and knowledge about the intricacies involved in the food production; therefore, it is vital to emphasise the key differences between organic and conventional foods. The findings of this study thus offer several important implications for researchers and practitioners of organic food.</p>