Integrating Multiple Factors Affecting Consumer Behavior Toward Organic Foods: The Role of Healthism, Hedonism, and Trust in Consumer Purchase Intentions of Organic Foods

ABSTRACT

Consumer awareness about organic foods has been growing. However, this trend is not always translated to consumer organic food purchases. It is argued that when it comes to assessing organics, one should expect consumers to use multiattribute evaluations due to credence attributes and organic standards that organic foods need to adhere to. A thorough review of the existing literature on consumer buying behavior of organic foods identifies healthism, hedonism, and trust among some factors that enhance consumer experiences with organic foods and therefore can affect their purchase intentions. This article is one the few studies that integrated multiple factors in one research framework to empirically evaluate their role in explaining consumer purchase intentions of organic foods. Results from a demographically representative sample completed by an online survey in Australia (N = 1011) provides support for the research hypotheses by revealing positive and statistically significant effects of healthism, hedonism, and trust on consumer purchase intentions. The study concludes with implications and suggestions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian consumers
• healthism
• hedonism
• organic food
• purchase intentions
• trust

Funding

The research supporting this article was funded by the Organic Federation of Australia and the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA).

Notes

¹ Durbin-Watson test statistics were all close to 2, which is interpreted as confirming the assumption of error independence (Norusis, 1993). Results from other specification tests, which all indicated no violation of the above assumptions, are available from the authors upon request.

Additional information

Funding

The research supporting this article was funded by the Organic Federation of Australia and the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA).