Should I Buy Organic Food? A Psychological Perspective on Purchase Decisions - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 43

Although attitudes have been repeatedly shown to be a relevant predictor of organic food
purchase a significant gap between pro-organic attitudes and actual consumption of organic
food remains. This attitude-behaviour gap that has been described in many behavioural
domains has been attributed both to variables mediating between attitudes and behaviour
and variables moderating this relation (Armitage & Christian, 2003). The first line of
reasoning refers to that attitudes may not be a direct predictor of purchase behaviour but
only have an indirect effect via other more proximal variables. The second line of reasoning
refers to the assumption that other variables might impact the strength of the relation
between attitudes and behaviour. Both aspects lead to more complex models that will be
debated in section 5.
2.3 Concern
Finally, concern is a less clearly defined construct. In the medical and health context concern
has been described as a worry expressed by a patient or a strong negative emotion
(Schofield, Green, & Creed, 2008). With respect to other people concern has also been
understood as expressing sympathy and compassion for less fortunate others (Fox, 2006), a
concept that might also be generalized to non-human creatures or the environment in
general. What characterizes concern is therefore an emotional reaction to anticipated
negative effects either for oneself or for other people which potentially leads to tendencies to
act against the negative impact.
Although concern for health, food safety, the environment, animal welfare or agricultural
workers have been discussed in section 2.2 already and although there is a certain overlap it
makes sense to look into concern for health and food safety as these two motivators of
purchasing organic food might function differently from the others discussed before. Health
concerns connected to conventional food are the most relevant motivator to buy organic
food (Hughner et al., 2003). Magnusson et al. (2003) found that health concerns are more
important than environmental concerns. Padel and Foster (2005) outline that this is
especially the case for people with children. Specifically, the absence of chemicals like
artificial fertilizers or pesticides, growth hormones or antibiotics etc. in organic agriculture
and thereby avoiding possible negative health effects have been named as motivators (e.g.,
Schifferstein & Ophuis, 1998; Ott, 1990). Furthermore, that organic food is free from genetic
modification is another motivator with a connection to health concern (Baker et al., 2004;
Makatouni, 2002). However, Verdurme et al. (2002) were able to show that not all people
who purchase organic food are opposing genetically modified food. Makatouni (2002) also
found that fear of animal diseases or food scandals associated with the conventional food
industry may have an impact. What makes separating health and food safety concerns,
which is an emotional reaction to a perceived health threat, from the other beliefs about
organic food attractive is that this opens for applying health psychological models to the
purchase of organic food. This will be pursued further in section 6.
3. Situational impacts and their subjective representation: Availability,
visibility, and price
It is not surprising that situational conditions like availability, visibility or the price of
organic food relative to conventional alternatives has an impact on purchase decisions. In
this section their impact will be analysed in more detail, with a special focus on their
subjective representation, because objective accessibility or price differences are not