Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Agricultural policies in many developed countries, including European Union, have
responded to favourable market trends and benefits external to the markets (e.g.
environmental and spatial impacts) arising from organic farming and other sustainable
agricultural practices (Hamm et al., 2002). This is reflected in rising importance of measures
to encourage and promote organic farming (OECD, 2003). With new EU legislation geared
towards increasing the production of organic food in Europe applied since 2009, the
growing awareness of organic food and its benefits should see the market continuing its
high growth into the near future.
There is a rather great amount of research work attributed to the attitudes of consumers
towards safe food, both in broad sense and with a particular accent towards organic fruit
and vegetables. Determinants of food choice and radical changes of related behavioural
patterns are challenging and important in many aspects. Initially, the main focus was to
investigate consumer's needs and motivations in order to support agro-food industry and
retailing sector in searching competitive advantage with supreme supply. Currently the
questions of food choice became also an issue from the perspective of public health and
motivation of the policy makers in developed economies to improve dietary patterns of the
population. Contemporary research literature on food choice considers product attributes as
one of the perspectives to increase understanding of consumer or buyer (Assael 1998). A
product is comprehended as an aggregation of several characteristics and components -
referred as product attributes; upon which buyers makes their choices. Consumers during a
complex cognitive process form beliefs and develop attitudes and intentions. A number of
papers have dealt with the consumer behaviour, decision-making process and attitudes
towards notion of safety related to food, both in broad sense and with a particular accent
towards food produced under a specific quality assurance system like organic agriculture.
Previous studies showed that consumers perceive organic food as of higher quality, safer
and fresher (e.g. Thompson & Kidwell, 1998; Schifferstein & Oude Ophuis, 1998; Loureiro et
al., 2001; Botanaki et al., 2006; Kihlberg, I. & Risvik, E. 2007). Another dimension of
attributes related to organic food is positive environmental impact, since it is perceived as
produce grown as natural and without chemicals (Grunert & Juhl, 1995). However
consumers' concerns regarding the pollution tend to be less important drivers for organic
food consumption than so called private benefits (Weir et al., 2003; Bellows et al., 2008).
Therefore healthiness of the products in comparison to conventional food options is among
the main reasons for organic food purchase (Loureiro et. al, 2001; Krystallis &
Chryssohoidis, 2005; Kihlberg & Risvik, 2007; de Magistris & Gracia, 2008). In this respect
the concern for children healthy diet has also been identified (Latacz-Lohmann and Foster,
1997). Yiridoe et al. (2005) exposed the importance of knowledge on organic food products
as a factor that is strongly affecting buying decision, since consumers without information
cannot differentiate the attributes of organic from conventional alternatives. Related factor
to knowledge is trust in system of labelling and conformity to standards of production
practices defined in regulation (Botonaki, 2006; Achilleas & Anastasios, 2008). The
importance of price as a barrier to purchase fruit and vegetable from non-conventional
production systems is confirmed by an increasing amount of research that assess the
consumers' willingness to pay a premium for organic or safe products (e.g. Weaver et al.
1992; Underhill & Figueroa, 1996; Govindasamy & Italia, 1999; Boccaletti & Nardella, 2000;
Canavari et al., 2005; Batte et al., 2007). Production yields are considerably lower for organic
production and therefore achieved price premium is a key determinant for organic farming
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