IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/05-352.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sustainable food consumption, involvement, certainty and values: an application of the theory of Planned Behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • I. VERMEIR
  • W. VERBEKE

Abstract

This study investigates determinants of sustainable consumption behaviour in Belgium. To gain a better insight in sustainable consumption, we conducted a study where sustainable attitudes and behaviour as well as some individual characteristics like involvement, certainty and values related to sustainable products are scrutinized. We explore if determinants as hypothesised by the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) – attitudes, perceived behavioural control, social norms - influence sustainable consumption intention in general and according to different levels of involvement, certainty and values. The empirical research builds on a survey with a sample of 456 young consumers, using a questionnaire and an experimental design with manipulation of key constructs through showing advertisements for sustainable dairy. The stepwise multiple regression showed that 50% of the variance in intention to consume or purchase sustainable dairy was explained by the combination of attitudes, perceived social influences, perceived consumer effectiveness and perceived availability. In addition, different levels of involvement, certainty and value orientation entail different strengths of the determinants. The findings yield public policy and marketing recommendations for stimulating sustainable food consumption among the young.

Suggested Citation

  • I. Vermeir & W. Verbeke, 2005. "Sustainable food consumption, involvement, certainty and values: an application of the theory of Planned Behaviour," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 05/352, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:05/352
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_05_352.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCarty, John A. & Shrum, L. J., 1994. "The recycling of solid wastes: Personal values, value orientations, and attitudes about recycling as antecedents of recycling behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 53-62, May.
    2. P. De Pelsmacker & L. Driesen & G. Rayp, 2003. "Are fair trade labels good business ? Ethics and coffee buying intentions," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 03/165, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    3. Faber, Malte & Petersen, Thomas & Schiller, Johannes, 2002. "Homo oeconomicus and homo politicus in Ecological Economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 323-333, March.
    4. Jager, W. & Janssen, M. A. & De Vries, H. J. M. & De Greef, J. & Vlek, C. A. J., 2000. "Behaviour in commons dilemmas: Homo economicus and Homo psychologicus in an ecological-economic model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 357-379, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. I. Vermeir & W. Verbeke, 2004. "Sustainable Food Consumption: Exploring The Consumer Attitude – Behaviour Gap," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 04/268, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vermeir, Iris & Verbeke, Wim, 2008. "Sustainable food consumption among young adults in Belgium: Theory of planned behaviour and the role of confidence and values," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 542-553, January.
    2. Menzel, Susanne, 2013. "Are emotions to blame? — The impact of non-analytical information processing on decision-making and implications for fostering sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 71-78.
    3. Levine, Jordan & Chan, Kai M.A. & Satterfield, Terre, 2015. "From rational actor to efficient complexity manager: Exorcising the ghost of Homo economicus with a unified synthesis of cognition research," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 22-32.
    4. Schlüter, Maja & Baeza, Andres & Dressler, Gunnar & Frank, Karin & Groeneveld, Jürgen & Jager, Wander & Janssen, Marco A. & McAllister, Ryan R.J. & Müller, Birgit & Orach, Kirill & Schwarz, Nina & Wij, 2017. "A framework for mapping and comparing behavioural theories in models of social-ecological systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 21-35.
    5. Geovanna Hinojoza-Castro & Montserrat Gómez-Delgado & Wenseslao Plata-Rocha, 2022. "Real Estate Developers as Agents in the Simulation of Urban Sprawl," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-12, July.
    6. Frings, Oliver & Abildtrup, Jens & Montagné-Huck, Claire & Gorel, Salomé & Stenger, Anne, 2023. "Do individual PES buyers care about additionality and free-riding? A choice experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    7. Andreas Falke & Nadine Schröder & Claudia Hofmann, 2022. "The influence of values in sustainable consumption among millennials," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(6), pages 899-928, August.
    8. D. Van den Poel, 2003. "Predicting Mail-Order Repeat Buying. Which Variables Matter?," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(3), pages 371-404.
    9. Cherrier, Helene & Türe, Meltem, 2020. "Value dynamics in ordinary object disposal," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 221-228.
    10. Ali DOUAI, 2007. "Wealth, Well-being and Value(s): A Proposition of Structuring Concepts for a (real) Transdisciplinary Dialogue within Ecological Economics," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2007-18, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    11. Yanping Gong & Xiuyuan Tang & Julan Xie & Long Zhang, 2022. "Exploring the Nexus Between Work-to-Family Conflict, Material Rewards Parenting and Adolescent Materialism: Evidence from Chinese Dual-Career Families," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 593-607, March.
    12. Funk, Matt, 2008. "On the Problem of Sustainable Economic Development: A Theoretical Solution to this Prisoner's Dilemma," MPRA Paper 19025, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Jun 2008.
    13. Cheung, Millissa F.Y. & To, W.M., 2019. "An extended model of value-attitude-behavior to explain Chinese consumers’ green purchase behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 145-153.
    14. Nhu Tuyên Lê & Marjolijn Bloemmen & Roxana Bobulescu & Claudio Vitari, 2015. "Microeconomic degrowth: The case of Community Supported Agriculture," Post-Print halshs-01923276, HAL.
    15. Heinzel, Christoph & Winkler, Ralph, 2006. "Gradual versus structural technological change in the transition to a low-emission energy industry: How time-to-build and differing social and individual discount rates influence environmental and tec," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 09/06, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    16. Soyoung Seo & Hee-Kyung Ahn & Jaeseok Jeong & Junghoon Moon, 2016. "Consumers’ Attitude toward Sustainable Food Products: Ingredients vs. Packaging," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-19, October.
    17. Feiyu Chen & Hong Chen & Jiahui Yang & Ruyin Long & Qianwen Li, 2018. "Impact of Information Intervention on the Recycling Behavior of Individuals with Different Value Orientations—An Experimental Study on Express Delivery Packaging Waste," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-20, October.
    18. Nguyen, The Ninh & Lobo, Antonio & Greenland, Steven, 2016. "Pro-environmental purchase behaviour: The role of consumers' biospheric values," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 98-108.
    19. Veisten, Knut, 2007. "Contingent valuation controversies: Philosophic debates about economic theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 204-232, April.
    20. Richter, Andries & Grasman, Johan, 2013. "The transmission of sustainable harvesting norms when agents are conditionally cooperative," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 202-209.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    sustainable consumption; attitudes; behavioural intention; involvement; certainty; values;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:05/352. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.