Buying organic food: The role of trust in the theory of planned behaviour

Four empirical studies explored the role of consumer trust in the genuineness of organic products within the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework (Ajzen, 1991). In the case of organic food consumption, consumer trust is an important issue since even after consumption consumers cannot verify whether a product is organic (Janssen & Hamm, 2012), i.e. it complies with the rules on organic production. Some studies have showed that trust is an critical predictor of consumer attitude, intention and buying decisions, also in the organic products domain (Angulo, Gifford & Bernard, 2006; Gil & Tamburo, 2005; Teng & Wang, 2015). The aims were: a) to test the TPB model applied considering four behavioural targets, namely the organic products purchase in general (Study 1), fresh organic fruit and vegetables (Study 2), processed organic fruit and vegetables (Study 3) and organic baking products (Study 4); b) to test whether trust in genuineness improves the TPB predictive power; c) to analyze whether it acts as further predictor in the TPB model. Four longitudinal studies were conducted. At time 1, the questionnaire included measures of trust in the genuineness of organic products, intention and its antecedents, according to the TPB. At time 2, self-reported purchase behaviours were surveyed. Four convenience samples of Italian adults were recruited. In hierarchical regressions, the trust was introduced at the first step; TPB variables were added at the next step. Trust significantly predicts both intentions and behaviours and alone explained 22-33% of intention variance and 7-12% of behavior variance; however it predicted the purchase intention, also after controlling for TPB antecedents which had significant effects on intention. Trust in the genuineness of organic products has direct effects on behavior only in the case of organic products in general and organic bakery products. Intention is the most important predictor of all purchase behaviours considered. Overall results support also the efficacy of original TPB in predicting the four behavioural targets considered.