Unravelling the attitude-behaviour gap paradox for sustainable food consumption: Insight from the UK apple market

Abstract

The remarkable progress made by the sustainable food industry as compared to the persistent small market share it holds, presents attitude-behaviour gap paradox which existing research is yet to address. The paper attempts to resolve this conundrum by addressing two key research objectives: Firstly, we draw on Campbell's paradigm to develop a sustainable product purchase behaviour model by conceptualising and measuring behavioural difficulties in terms of behavioural inhibitors/promoters, which includes Past Purchase, Premium Pricing, and Product Availability and Product Variety barriers. Further to this, we establish the exact role of purchase behavioural inhibitors/promoters from the point of view of Campbell's paradigm. This is achieved through analyses of actual behaviour data consisting of loyalty card data in the UK with a sample size of 1.8 million customers and supermarket shopper till receipt data in the UK. Evidence from the study established the existence of a sustainable product purchase inhibitor and promoter typology, which are critical to sustainable food purchase behaviour, but their degree of influence differ significantly. Our study subsequently, validates the Campbell's paradigm theory since we were able to establish using the actual purchase behaviour data that indeed, the purchase inhibitors are what causes the so-called gap between claimed purchase behaviour and actual purchase behaviour. The study further highlights theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.

Influencing Factors of Chinese Consumers’ Purchase Intention to Sustainable Apparel Products: Exploring Consumer “Attitude–Behavioral Intention” Gap

“…Tanner and Kast [22] (2003) emphasized the importance of variables such as attitudes, behavioral intention, and individual characteristics including demographics and psychographics to uncover the potential sustainable consumer. A recent study on purchase intentions toward sustainable foods also showed that psychosocial variables like attitudes, beliefs, and subjective norms, more than demographics, independently predict purchase intention for sustainable products [23] (Yamoah and Acquaye, 2019). Despite several studies reporting on barriers and consumer profiles, there is a gap in thorough understanding of consumer decision-making toward sustainable consumption, especially in terms of apparel.…”

“…Both researchers and practitioners have struggled with the lack of commensuration between industry growth and market share and sought out a solution via attitude-behavior research [23] (Yamoah and Acquaye, 2019). This study paid attention to the attitude-behavior gap model to investigate determinants of sustainable consumption in China.…”

How Does Retail Engage Consumers in Sustainable Consumption? A Systematic Literature Review

“…Examples of non-food products are sportswear [72], fashion products [44,73], clothing [39], fashion, beauty, and home décor [74], laundry detergent, and sanitizing wipes [75]. Researchers studied ecological, green, and sustainable products, such as ecological food products [76], eco-friendly products [77], grocery products with an eco-label [49], eco-labelled food [78], eco-fashion [79], green food and groceries [80], green fashion products [52], green products [81], sustainable seafood [38], apples from the sustainable food categories [40], sustainable household and personal care products [58], environmentally sustainable apparel [82], sustainability certified food products [41], and local food products [50].…”

“…The contextual factors related to the geographic areas are diverse, reflecting the European, American, and Asian markets. Most articles focus on European markets, especially the UK [38][39][40][41]46,[53][54][55]60,70,[83][84][85] and Sweden [41][42][43]46,47,54,59,72,74,76,77,86]. Other European countries considered by the reviewed articles include Austria [41], Belgium [45,73,78], Denmark [41,54], France [38,49,54], Finland [87], Germany [38,54,60,73], Italy [38,50], Netherlands [51,73,88], Norway [38], Poland [38], Spain [38], and Switzerland [69,…”

The Importance Given to Food Naturalness Attributes by Millennial University Students

“…According to Vega-Zamora et al [56], the choice of one product over another depends on the consumers' perceived benefits. Accordingly, the preference for natural food does not always translate into purchasing these foods [8] because it depends on other factors, such as the willingness to pay premium prices [6,8,[57][58][59], the product label information [15,59,60], and the variety and availability of natural food for purchasing [57]. However, there is a consensus among the literature that "trust" could be a predictor of consumer intentionality and behavior [8,56,61,62].…”