Assessing the Effects of Customer-perceived Values Toward Organic Food: The Moderating Role of Media Exposure to Food Safety Issues

Abstract

Despite a plentiful supply of organic food in emerging economies, consumers are slow to adopt sustainable organic food behaviors. India is one of the top five nations in the world in terms of the total amount of agricultural land that is certified as organic, but the domestic organic consumption in the country itself is really sparse. Using the framework of the theory of reasoned action, this investigation explores how customers’ perceived values (health and hedonic values) influence their attitude toward purchasing organic food. Also, it elaborates on the moderating effect of media exposure to food safety issues to know its strength in the attitude–intention relationship. This research utilized PLS-SEM to analyze the structural relationships among the constructs, with 202 responses from consumers in India. The study found the strongest influence of hedonic value over health value and subjective norms on the green purchase attitude of consumers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that investigated the moderating effect of media exposure on food safety issues on consumers’ attitude–intention relationship in a developing nation context. The study highlighted that people who have regularly been exposed to food safety related issues around them are more willing to buy organic food. Thus, it contributes to a more robust attitude–intention relationship among customers toward the purchase of organic food.