Understanding the Antecedents of Organic Food Purchases: The Important Roles of Beliefs, Subjective Norms, and Identity Expressiveness

By Li Bai, Mingliang Wang, Shunlong Gong. Sustainability, 2019

126 citations recorded by the source corpus.

China is expected to become an increasingly important market for global organic food producers. This study aims to obtain a new and deeper understanding of how various antecedents affect organic food purchase behavior. Here, a survey based on validated measures is designed, and a total of 1750 consumers are interviewed. In addition to traditionally held beliefs concerning organic food, three unique perspectives, i.e., that organic foods are “luxuries for the rich”, “upscale”, and the objects of “marketing hype”, are confirmed for the first time. Furthermore, the influence of subjective norms on purchase intention is verified to be completely mediated by purchase attitude, suggesting that up to now, the role of social norms may have been simplified, and even underestimated by marketing researchers. Additionally, for the first time, identity expressiveness is confirmed to play a minor but significant role in purchase intention. Perceived trustworthiness is also confirmed to be the important predictor of purchase intention. Finally, household income is not only the second most important predicator of purchase intention, but it is also the most important predictor of actual purchase. These findings will be valuable for marketing scholars and all stakeholders in the organic food industry, particularly international agribusinesses that are wishing to enter the Chinese market.

Subfields: Marketing, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/63a42884429bb76d46c29951a602a37b51cf7e64

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

1. S. Naz
2. Sikander Ali Qalati
3. Faisal Rana
4. Cai Li
5. Naveed Ahmed
6. Asadullah Khan

In Plant Science

1. B. Tan
2. S. M. Pang
3. T. Lau

Citations in the corpus

• Antecedents of Consumers’ Purchase Intention towards Organic Food: Integration of Theory of Planned Behavior and Protection Motivation Theory (2021, background): “Perceived Threat A recent study by Bai, Wang, and Gong [25] suggested that perceived threat is comprised of three sub-constructs: perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, and fear.”
• Purchase intention toward organic food among young consumers using theory of planned behavior: role of environmental concerns and environmental awareness (2020, background): “Subjective norms play a vital role in the utilization and purchase intentions of young consumers for organic foods (Bai, Wang, and Gong 2019).”