Health Consciousness, Food Safety Concern, and Consumer Purchase Intentions Toward Organic Food: The Role of Consumer Involvement and Ecological Motives

Donglei Yu,Muhammad Imran,Jawad Iqbal,Hafiz Muhammad Usman Khizar,Maria Zubair,Muhammad Imran Rasheed

doi:10.1177/21582440211015727

Abstract

The organic food market is speedily growing in the current era; organizations in this industry, therefore, need to understand consumer motivations, perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions of purchasing organic food. Based on a survey of 268 respondents, we investigated the relationships between individuals’ food safety concerns and health consciousness with their purchase intentions of organic food. The findings of our study reveal that individuals’ health consciousness and food safety concerns are positively related to their intentions of purchasing organic food products through consumer involvement. In addition, consumers’ ecological motive has been found as a boundary condition on the direct and indirect relationships described above such that the associations are stronger at the higher levels of ecological motive.

Highlights

Consumers are ever more concerned about the quality, safety, and environmental-friendliness of food
Results of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) revealed that standardized factor loadings for health consciousness were ranging from .61 to .88; for food safety concerns, .70 to .80; for ecological motives, .72 to .91; for consumer involvement, .62 to .86; and for purchase intentions, .64 to
Following the recommendation of Byrne (2016), we measured the fit indices such as CMIN/df, comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and Tucker– Lewis index (TLI) resulting in the acceptable levels of these fit indices (i.e., CMIN/df = 1.41, CFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.06, TLI = 0.91)

Summary

Introduction

Consumers are ever more concerned about the quality, safety, and environmental-friendliness of food. The growing need for a healthier diet caused a rapid increase in organic food consumption worldwide (Al-Swidi et al, 2014; Kushwah et al, 2019; Waqas & Hong, 2019). The industry of organic or natural food has nurtured exponentially in recent years with a growth rate of approximately 10% to 30% (Rana & Paul, 2017). Consumers are more inclined toward natural, healthy, pure, and less injuring to the environment food (Mondelaers et al, 2009; Rimal & Moon, 2006); the demand for this food (organic) has been widely grown in the past few years (Van Huy et al, 2019). Extant research in the field of organic food consumption has highlighted various factors that motivate consumer behavior (Rana & Paul, 2017). Previous studies have found customer interest in shaping their attitude and behavior toward food products (Campbell & DiPietro, 2014; Prebensen et al, 2013)

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Discussion

Conclusion