The Potential Influence of Organic Food Consumption and Intention-Behavior Gap on Consumers’ Subjective Wellbeing

Abstract

This paper applied a self-administered survey to investigate the impact of organic food behavior and the intention-behavior gap in organic food consumption (OIBG) on consumers’ subjective wellbeing including physical, emotional, social and intellectual dimensions. The survey was carried out with 385 consumers. Furthermore, the study conducted a food test to explore the different impacts of organic and conventional food samples on the mental and physical conditions of consumers’ wellbeing applying a psychological questionnaire. The food test took place in a sensory lab with a panel of 63 untrained German consumers. The research findings demonstrated a positive impact of the organic food consumption on consumers’ subjective wellbeing, while no negative impact of OIBG has been perceived. Moreover, during the food test, consumers distinguished no differences between the impact of organic and conventional stimuli on their mental and physical status. Understanding how consumers perceive the impact of organic food consumption on their wellbeing is one important aspect. However, in the interest of narrowing the OIBG, it is more important to understand how consumers perceive the impact of this gap on their daily-life wellbeing.

Exploring Influential Factors Including COVID-19 on Green Food Purchase Intentions and the Intention–Behaviour Gap: A Qualitative Study among Consumers in a Chinese Context

“…‘’Health’’ was the most frequent term mentioned by consumers, which is in agreement with the results from Ismael and Ploeger [ 44 ]. Our results also confirmed the findings from previous studies, in which “physical health” was one of the most strongly correlated terms with environmentally friendly food products [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. In addition, participants agreed with other dimensions, including “intrinsic attributes” (e.g., sensory attributes, nutritional value, less pesticides), “extrinsic attributes” (e.g., high price, safe, sustainability, less pollution), and “psychological and personal aspects” (e.g., better life, enjoyment).…”

“…Therefore, their purchase behaviour was not univocally consistent with attitudes and intentions, thus presenting the prevalent existence of the IBG phenomena in consumers’ green food consumption. These findings demonstrate that green or organic food markets are still suffering this disparity between favourable intention towards sustainable behaviour, which supports the results from Aschemann-Witzel and Zielke [ 88 ], Ismael and Ploeger [ 44 ], and Vermeir and Verbeke [ 89 ]. When probing the IBG of consumers making purchasing decisions of green food products, high price, unavailability, mistrust issues, and limited knowledge were identified as major factors contributing to this gap.…”

“…Hence, these factors show a similarly important impact of the green gap despite the diversity of green products or green behaviours in different contexts. Specifically, a high price was the most significant factor in preventing consumers from transforming their intentions into buying more expensive green food products, which is widely confirmed by previous studies showing that a premium price of environmentally friendly food products has the strongest negative effect on a consumers’ final purchase [ 21 , 25 , 44 , 60 , 61 ]. While facing this high price gap, it is suggested that the implication for the green food sector is to engage in further efforts to reduce the high price image of green food as well as improve the product differentiation of the green food products.…”

“…Among these words, ‘’healthy’’ (16), ‘’high price’’ (10), and ‘’safe’’ (8) were the most frequently mentioned words by consumers. All words were summarized and grouped into four dimensions, based on categorization used by Ismael and Ploeger [ 44 ]. Table 2 shows the frequency of mention of individual words in four categories.…”

“…Nowadays, food consumption patterns are rapidly changing, thus a growing number of consumers are starting to choose environmentally friendly food products [ 4 ]. Health consciousness among consumers is one of the most motivating factors, especially for environmentally friendly food consumption [ 10 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. Health-related topics were also the most frequently mentioned by participants in the study.…”