A Study of Consumer Health Food Purchase Intentions Based on fsQCA Methodology in TPB Framework

Abstract

In order to reveal the correlation path of consumer health food purchase intentions and to guide the benign development of healthy diet concepts, 310 samples were selected and research was carried out on consumer health food purchase with TPB theory as the core framework. The article replaces behavioral attitude (traditional variable in the TPB model) with perceived value, introduces a new variable: food information, and conducts a configuration analysis on four variables. The study found that: (1) Subjective norm constitutes a necessary condition for health food purchase intentions. (2) When subjective norm is high, other three antecedent conditions: perceived value, food information, and perceived behavioral control have a relationship of mutual substitution, i.e., they are equivalent in terms of results on health food purchase intentions. (3) There are three sufficient configurations that can stimulate the emergence of health food purchasing behavior, including autonomous perceived type, externally restricted type, and information-influenced type. This program not only improves and enriches the variables in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), but also makes up the fact that health food purchase intention is the result of the joint influence of many factors——which is neglected by traditional quantitative method. Since the subjects tested are concentrated in first-tier cities, further support from other research samples is needed for the generalizability of the above conclusions.