To Buy or Not to Buy? Consumer Attitudes and Purchase Intentions for Suboptimal Food.

Song-Lin Wong,Cheng-Chin Hsu,Han-Shen Chen

doi:10.3390/ijerph15071431

Abstract

Food system and food safety have drawn spontaneous global attention due to the effect of substantial environmental concerns. Three billion tons of food are wasted every year, estimated as being a third of all produced food. The production of much of this waste is directly linked to the unwillingness to sell, purchase, and consume suboptimal food that have deviated from regular products in terms of appearance standards, date labeling, or damaged packaging. Yet empirical research on this issue is scarce. This study aims to develop an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) research model, which includes environmental concern and sensory appeal to predict consumers’ purchase intention to suboptimal foods. A total of 539 respondents collected in Taiwan as data input. The empirical results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that consumers’ attitude was the main predictor of their intention to purchase suboptimal foods. Interestingly, this research showed that both perceived behavioral control and subjective norms were not significant predictors of intention. Furthermore, adding environmental concern and sensory appeal as the additional constructs to the TPB significantly increased the explanatory power of the standard model. These findings provide important insights for suboptimal food and useful recommendations for marketing channels, suggesting that promotion of suboptimal food may be the key to potential business.

Highlights

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) research data [1], at least one-third of the world’s food is wasted every year
The study sought to enhance the predictive power of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) through the incorporation of two additional constructs within it, namely, sensory appeal and environmental concern
The first is confirmation that, with respect to consumer intentions regarding the purchase of suboptimal foods, the TPB can serve effectively as a framework for predicting said intentions

Summary

Introduction

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) research data [1], at least one-third of the world’s food is wasted every year. Bilska et al [3] indicates that the causes of food waste at the supply chain include such factors as incorrect package labels, incorrect food product weight labels, damaged expiration date labels and packaging, among others. According to the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration [4] report, Taiwan throws out 3.6 thousand tons of food a year. Hooge et al [5] show that even though suboptimal foods differ from regular products in appearance, expiration date or packaging, their quality and safety are similar. Consumers often reject edible foods with changes in visual, sensory quality, or which passed the expiration date [6].

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Conclusion