Consumers’ awareness and consumption intention towards green foods

Abstract

Consumers’ food consumption patterns are changing rapidly. Consumers are becoming more concerned about the food they consume. They tend to consume food that is nutritious, healthy, safe and friendly to the environment and animals. Thus, the green concept is now steadily being disseminated among consumers in conjunction with the sustainability and conservation of agricultural development. Green foods refer to foods that are safe for consumption, fine in quality and are nutritious in meeting the principle of sustainable development. This paper focuses on the consumers’ awareness and intention towards green foods consumption in Malaysia. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is applied in this study. A structured questionnaire was designed and used as an instrument to gather information on green food consumer behavior. A survey was conducted in late 2010 and 1355 respondents were used in the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses were used to analyze the data collected. The results indicate that most of the respondents are aware of the green concept. The results also show that there are significant differences among the respondents’ awareness towards green food and age, geographical area, education level and income. The respondents also indicated that green food is not only about being organic but it also encompasses the concept of food safety, health issues, environmental hazard as well as animal welfare. Thus, most of the respondents were aware of the green concept which is a strong indicator of consumers’ intention to go green in food consumption. Key words: Consumers, awareness, intention, green concept, foods, sustainable agriculture.