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 121

The organic label equation (ORG_LABEL) includes socio-demographic characteristics, self-
reported knowledge, objective knowledge, and lifestyles (FEMALE, LW_INC, KNOW,
GMOs, NOSNACK and STRESS). FEMALE has a positive significant effect on paying
attention to organic label, while LW_INC is negative. Findings are in accordance with
Canavari et al. (2002); Millock et al. (2003); Lockie et al. ( 2004), Tsakiridou et al.( 2006);
Gracia and de Magistris (2008). Moreover, the positive and statistically significant estimated
coefficient for the variable KNOW indicates that, if consumers show a high degree of self-
reported organic knowledge, they are more likely to pay attention on organic label when
shopping. However, only the variable GMOs related with organic knowledge has been
found with a positive sign and it is statistically significant.
On the other hand, as we expected from other studies ( Schifferstein and Oude Ophuis,
1998; Chryssohoidis and Krystallis, 2005; de Magistris and Gracia, 2009) variables related
to lifestyles (NOSNACK and STRESS) are statistically significant, meaning that those
consumers who usually do not have snack and they try not to stress are more likely to pay
attention on organic label when shopping.
To pay attention to organic food label (ORG_LABEL) has been statistically significant on the
intention to purchase (IP) equation. The positive coefficient associated with the
ORG_LABEL variable in the intention to purchase equation indicates that the consumers
who pay attention to the organic labels are more likely to buy organic food products. As we
expected there is a significant relation between the intention to purchase organic food
products (IP) and other variables related with attitudes towards purchase (GOOD). In
addition, the positive and statistically significant estimate coefficients for the HEALTH and
FRESH variables indicate that the more consumers believe that organic foods are healthier
and fresher than conventional food ones, the more likely they are to buy organic food
products. Finally, there is a positive and significant relation between the intention to
purchase organic food products and the perceived behavior control (DIFFICULTY). These
findings are consistent with those reported in Magnusson et al. (2001), Fotopoulos and
Krystallis ( 2002), Zanoli and Naspetti (2002), Padel and Foster (2005) Chryssohoidis and
Krystallis (2005), Tarkianen and Sundqvist (2005), Honkanen et al. (2006) and, Thogersen
(2007). However, subjective norms (SNORM) and moral norms (MORAL) have not found
statistically significant from zero. Finally, the intention to purchase organic food (IP)
estimated parameter is positive and statistically significant in final organic purchase
decision (OP). This means that as Ajzen postulates, the intention to purchase is the best
predictor of final behavior, in our case organic food purchase. Only one additional variable,
moral norm (MORAL) positively influences the final purchase decision.
We calculated the marginal effects to assess the effects of the exogenous variables on
ORG_LABEL, IP, and OP variables (ordinal variables). In this specific case, and for the
continuous exogenous variables, effects are calculated by means of the partial derivatives of
the probabilities with respect to a given exogenous variable. In the case of dummy variables,
the marginal effects are calculated taking the difference between the predicted probabilities
in the respective variables of interest, changing from 0 to 1 and holding the rest constant.
The change in predicted probabilities gives a more accurate description of the marginal
effect of a dummy variable on event probability, than predicting the probability at the mean
level of the dummy variable. The marginal effects for the continuous variables and for the
dummy variables are shown in Tables 8, 9 and 10.