Do Consumers Pay Attention to the Organic Label When Shopping Organic Food in Italy? - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 110

consumers' attention to organic label, the intention to purchase, and organic consumption
are the dependent variables. Findings show that paying attention to organic labeling
influences the intention to purchase organic food products. Moreover, attitudes and
lifestyles are the best predictors of organic purchase. However, environmental attitudes and
subjective norms do not affect the intention to purchase them, while ethical dimension is
considered one of main factors driving organic food purchases.
The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 develops the theoretical framework
where the relationship among endogenous and exogenous variables of our model are
justified by literature review. Section 3 describes an overview of the European legislation on
organic food labeling; Section 4 focuses on the data gathered and methodology. Section 5
shows the main results; and, finally, Section 6 concludes with a discussion of the marketing
and policy implications.
2. Literature review
In general, research on the organic purchase intention is well documented in the academic
literature (Saba and Messina, 2003; Tarkiainen and Sundqvist, 2005; Chen, 2007; Chen, 2008;
Thogersen, 2007a; Dean et al., 2008; de Magistris and Gracia, 2009; Aertsen et al., 2009).
Some studies analyzed the intention to purchase organic food products using the Theory of
Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) where the intention is considered the best predictor of
behavior. In accordance with the TPB, the attitudes toward action sequence, as well as the
relations among factors on the intention have been part of the general approach to attitudes
in social psychology. A major theoretical position on attitudes and action has been
formulated by Ajzen (1991) as the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), where the behavioural
intention is basically determined by three factors: attitudes, subjective norms and perceived
behavioural control. Attitudes are composed of behavioural beliefs and outcome evaluations
of the consequences of beliefs. Subjective norms refer to perceived social pressure to
perform or not perform the behaviour as perceived by the person. Finally, perceived
behavioural control is the individual's beliefs about the amount of control that an individual
has to successfully complete his/her behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).
Findings revealed that consumers' attitudes towards organic attributes (taste, health , food
safety, environmentally friendly, animal welfare) and salient beliefs (attitudes towards its
purchase, personal moral norms, ethical motivations and emotions ) are the most important
factors that explain consumers' decision-making process for organic food (Magnusson et al,
2001; Thøgersen, 2002; Saba and Messina, 2003; Millok et al., 2004; Verhoef, 2005; Tarkiainen
and Sundqvist, 2005; Padel and Foster, 2005; Chryssohoidis and Krystallis, 2005; Honkanen
et al., 2006; Thøgersen and Olander, 2006; Chen, 2007; Chen, 2008; Dean et al., 2008; Arvola
et al., 2008; Aertsen et al., 2009; Gracia and de Magistris, 2008; de Magistris and Gracia,
2009; Guido et al., 2010). The results showed significant differences across the products and
countries where the research was carried out.
2.1 Theoretical model
2.1.1 Attitudes
Attitudes towards the behavior refer to the degree to which an individual has a favorable or
unfavorable evaluation of the behavior (Ajzen, 1991). According to Ajzen(1991) the more
favorable the attitudes are towards a behavior, the stronger is the persons' intention to
perform the behavior under consideration. Some studies about organic consumers reported