Trust factors for organic foods: consumer buying behavior

摘要

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between trust factors and buying behavioramong consumers in the organic food market in Taiwan.Design/methodology/approach - The researchers developed a questionnaire using latent variablesincluding the trust factors, utilitarian attitudes, hedonic attitudes, buying behavior and demographicinformation of consumers of organic foods. Confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equationmodeling were conducted using LISREL 8.80 for Windows.Findings - The empirical results indicated that health content, locally produced products, organic foodlabels and price premiums positively and significantly affected utilitarian and hedonic attitudes. Bothutilitarian attitudes and hedonic attitudes positively and significantly affected respondents' buying behavior.A series of theoretical implications were identified.Practical implications - The researchers concluded that providing consumers with practical informationrelated to organic food, establishing local production facilities, developing content, standardizing labelingprocedures and promoting a new organic certification system for small-scale producers will encourage moreconsumers to purchase organic food.Originality/value - This study first examines the food trust buying behavior of organic foods and relatedconsumption behavior theory questions. It mainly takes the stimulus-organism-response model as thefoundation of its approach. Simultaneously, it also conforms to utilitarian behavior theory, and the process bywhich consumers become better aware of organic foods' quality.