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 118

knowledge was measured by four dummy variables (GMOs, NATURAL, ANIMAL
WELFARE and, 95_INGREDIENTS) which take 1 value if respondent states that organic
food products are GMOs free, natural, they support the animal welfare and, they content
95% of organic ingredients at least, and 0 otherwise (see table 3)

Variable definition Name (type) Value

%

Gender
Male
Female

42
58

FEMALE (dummy)

Household Size 2.9

HSIZE (continuous)

Age of respondent (average) AGE 45

Education of respondent
Elementary
Secondary
University

8.1
43.5
48.4 UNIVERSITY (dummy)

Household Income:
Net income lower than 1,500 €/month
Net income between 1,500 and 2,500 €/month
Net income higher than 2,500 €/month

23.1
63.1
14.8

LW_INC (dummy)

Table 2. Sample characteristics

Exogenous variables Name (type) Value

Self-reported knowledge on organic foods
High (3)
Medium (2)
Low (1)

44.4
48.42
7.11

KNOW

Objective knowledge on organic foods

They are free GMOs (dummy) GMOs 78%

They are natural (dummy) NATURAL 63%

They support the animal welfare (dummy) 72%

ANIMAL
WELFARE

They content 95% of organic ingredients at least (dummy) 95_INGREDIENTS 77%

Table 3. Self-reported knowledge and organic knowledge

The second set of questions were related to organic food consumption (consumption level,
intention to purchase, frequency of purchase, perceived quality, place of purchase, etc.).
Finally, several questions about consumers' attitudes towards organic food products and
environmental aspects were included.
Table 4 presents the definition of the endogenous variables. More than 50% of consumers
declare to be an habitual buyer of organic food products; and 82% of them are willingness