Factors affecting consumers’ organic food purchase behavior: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

Consumers all over the world are constantly adjusting their dietary habits, and organic food has attracted consumers’ attention due to its health and safety characteristics, which makes the organic industry flourish. The factors that affect consumer decisions to purchase organic food are also of great interest to academia. However, there is a lack of systematic and thorough synthesis of the results of the existing study, which are somewhat broad and dispersed. This study aims to synthesize and analyze the existing research on the factors that influence consumers’ purchase decisions of organic food, with a focus on 51 papers extracted from the Web of Science database using the PRISMA method. First, the basic status of the selected papers was analyzed (including publication year, theory, method, and region), then three categories of significant factors were identified by comparative research of the literature as influencing customers’ organic buying behavior: customer-related, product-specific, and external factors. The result contributes to the growth of the organic food industry and aids academics in understanding the current state of consumers’ consumption behavior of organic foods. Finally, plausible gaps were explored in the existing literature and a tentative research agenda for future researchers was proposed.