Organic Food Consumption among Households in Hanoi: Importance of Situational Factors

Anh Thi Van Tran,Nhung Thi Nguyen

doi:10.3390/su132212496

Abstract

The promotion of sustainable consumption plays an extremely important role in Vietnam’s National Green Growth Strategy. However, despite an increase in concerns about environmental issues, eco-friendly buying behaviors in general and organic food consumption in particular are still unpopular among Vietnamese consumers, leading to a question about the importance of situational factors, which this article focuses on. Based on attitudes; subjective norms; perceived norms, which are mentioned in the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and consumer choice theory; and social norms from social categorization theory, the research created a questionnaire and then sent it to respondents who were in charge of buying food for their family in Hanoi. Then, 423 of the 570 responses received were used to create the structural equation model (SEM) with four distinct stages in AMOS statistical software, which evidences the crucial role of situational factors. Subjective norms and social norms have the highest positive impact on organic food purchase among households in Hanoi. Moreover, households’ organic food purchase is also positively affected by perceived behavior control and the availability of products but negatively affected by the price of products, which strongly fits with TPB, social categorization theory, and other studies. In particular, there is no evidence about relationships between knowledge of or attitude toward organic food and family income and organic food purchase among households in Hanoi. In addition, age and education status do not have any impact on respondents’ behavior in organic food purchase in this city. Finally, the authors propose some suggestions to promote organic food consumption among households in Hanoi. First is that businesses specializing in the production and supply of organic products should focus on customer care activities, innovate business models, and advertise to attract customers to use organic products. Second is that the government should issue regulations to encourage businesses to invest in the research and production of organic products as well as implement strict regulations to penalize violations in the production and supply of organic products.

Highlights

Introduction iationsThe concept of green consumption may have emerged as early as the 1960s [1,2].oơowHothe term “green consumption” has been used differently and sometimes interchangeably with other terms [1]
The research focused much more on situational factors including households’ income, price, and availability of organic food, which belongs to perceived behavior control—one of the three main components of the theory of planned behavior (TPB)—as well as social norms, which primarily originated from social categorization theory
Cronbach’ alpha, which was applied in SPSS for factors related to knowledge, attitude toward organic food purchase, subjective norms, perceived behavior control toward organic food purchase, price of organic food, availability of organic food, households’ income per person, and social norms, indicated that all factors are reliable and appropriate to test exploratory factor analysis

Summary

Introduction

Introduction iationsThe concept of green consumption may have emerged as early as the 1960s [1,2].oơowHothe term “green consumption” has been used differently and sometimes interchangeably with other terms [1]. The concept of green consumption may have emerged as early as the 1960s [1,2]. Green consumption is a form of consumption that allows people to participate in environmental protection [3] or is often referred to as 5R consumption, including reduce, revaluate, reuse, recycle, and rescue [4]. There are several terms related to green consumption, namely environmentally friendly products and environmentally responsible consumers. Friendly products are typically durable, non-toxic, made of recycled materials, or minimally packaged [5] or do not pollute the earth or damage natural resources and can be recycled or conserved [6]. Friendly products can, for our purposes, be divided into four categories, namely food and drink, domestic products, personal products, and green community [7,8]

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