Role of consumers' environmental views on purchases at wineries

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore how winery consumers' sustainability attitudes and subjective norms influence their intentions to purchase wines from wineries which have adopted an environmental management program. We collected data in the naturalistic setting of winery tasting rooms. The wineries we researched receive a large number of visitors and a significant portion of total sales volume results from direct sales to consumers in their tasting rooms. Our findings indicate that both sustainability attitudes and subjective norms are significant predictors of intentions explaining over half of the variation in behavioral intentions to purchase wine from a winery participating in an environmental management program. In addition, environmental organization members were found to have higher levels of these antecedents to behavioral intentions and were more interested in receiving information about the environmental activities of wine producers.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• theory of reasoned action
• environmental attitudes
• environmental management programs
• wine consumers

Acknowledgements

The research in this study was supported by a grant to Cornell University from the New York Farm Viability Institute Inc. and additional funding from the Cornell Cooperative Extension Suffolk Agricultural Stewardship Program. This study was made possible by the participation of the owners and staff of Kings Ferry Winery, Hunt Country Vineyards, and Shinn Estates Vineyards. We gratefully acknowledge their support.

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript.