Factors Influencing Purchase Intention of Organic Rice in Thailand

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study investigates factors influencing purchase intention of organic rice using Thailand as the case study. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was adopted as a theoretical framework, and a conceptual framework is cross-validated through a three-pronged approach: literature reviews, expert interviews, and field survey. Then, exploratory factor analysis is performed to ensure the constructs’ validity and reliability. After that, structural equation modeling is employed to test the conceptual framework and hypotheses. Through the concrete study of more than 800 samples, surprisingly, the findings indicate that several factors significant to purchase intention in the literature were found to be insignificant in this study, which could be the result of cultural differences. These factors are perceived health and CSR, sensory perception, peer pressure, advertisement, perceived price and convenience, and perceived knowledge. Moreover, trust could be separated into two types, trust in documents and trust in non-documents, which are new findings never mentioned in the literature. In this study, only trust in documents and consumers’ experience significantly affects purchase intention of organic rice. Academic, managerial and policy implications are discussed.