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This study tested whether information on positive food additives and negative food additives had an effect on consumers&rsquo ; risk perception and their willingness to accept (WTA) food with additives. Consumers&rsquo ; WTA was examined via a random nth-price auction of exchanging freshly squeezed orange juice without additives for orange juice with additives. Results show that consumers&rsquo ; WTA differs with the order in which information was provided. Consumers are generally more sensitive to negative than positive information on additives. Female, middle-educated consumers are more susceptible to additive information and their WTA is more likely to change, while postgraduate-educated consumers are less sensitive to additive information. Consumers with higher food-safety satisfaction have lower WTA than those who are not satisfied with food safety. However, their satisfaction is easily affected by the negative-information intervention. Interestingly, consumers with relatively good knowledge of additives had higher WTA than those with no such knowledge. This study provides insight on how to establish effective food-safety-risk communication. Government and non-government agencies need to timely and accurately eliminate food-safety scares through the daily communication and disclosure of food-safety information, as well as prevent the misguidance of negative food safety-risk information.

Globally, concerns regarding consumers' food quality and safety have increased. There is an increase in the search of alternative healthy and safe food that also enhances immunity. Organic food eliminates most of the concerns that consumers have. Market experts expect the Indian domestic organic food market to grow rapidly in the coming years. This study aims to understand the characteristics, attitudes, and buying patterns of different types of consumers so that producers, sellers, and the government can design appropriate marketing strategies. To study the attitude of consumers, the Multi-attribute Model was used. A survey was conducted in Delhi-NCR, and data was obtained from 556 consumers. Through Exploratory Factor Analysis, six factors were derived: health, humanity, and environment; obstacles in buying; trust and confidence; fundamental knowledge; tradition and culture; and social acceptance and status. Based on these factors, and with cluster analysis, consumers were classified into five segments: incognizant consumers, unconcerned consumers, critical consumers, conservative consumers, and congruent consumers.

AbstractWithin the consumer behaviour literature, there has been little research on factors that influence customers' choices for organic foods. This study investigates three aspects of the Taiwanese organic food market. The first aspect considers how argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison affect consumer‐social venture identification. The second aspect examines how identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination affect personal relevance. The third and final aspect investigates how consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance influence customer citizenship behaviour. The results show that consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance have significant and positive effects on customer citizenship behaviour. Furthermore, argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison all have significant and positive effects on consumer‐social venture identification. Finally, identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination have significant and positive effects on personal relevance. This study makes three contributions regarding consumers' behaviour of purchasing organic foods. First, it explores whether consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance are antecedents of customer citizenship behaviour. Second, it investigates whether argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison are antecedents of consumer‐social venture identification. Last, it examines whether identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination are antecedents of personal relevance. The practical implications of this study indicate that firms must pay more attention to consumers' information search/sharing and perceptions of a credible environment for sharing information and their awareness about healthy items and personal images on social networking sites.

Raippalinna explores how consumers are mobilised for food waste reduction in media discourse. Food waste reduction initiatives are often criticised for putting the responsibility on individual consumers, but little research exists on the mobilisation of consumers in actual contexts. Through critical discourse analysis of media texts, Raippalinna investigates how the food waste problem and consumers are constructed in relation to each other in Finlands leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat 2010–2017. The analysis demonstrates that the discourses of consumer mobilisation appear mostly as consumer education where the consumer's role is to manage individual consumption and household practices. The theoretical framework combines governmentality studies with a practice theoretical approach on consumption. Raippalinna discusses if and how media discourse can contribute to a transformation of food (waste) related practices. ; peerReviewed

This paper argues that food safety did not arise as a "new" obsession at the end of the twentieth century, but has been an intermittent object of public and policy concern over the last two hundred years in the UK. However, the nature of food policy has shifted over that period, from an orientation towards protecting a largely ignorant public from fraud, through controlling the risks potentially arising from negligence in food–handling, to informing rational consumers to enable them to "choose" the right foods. Most recently, the public have had a nominally more active role in food policy, as citizens consulted on the content of the policy agenda. Drawing on histories of food policy in the UK and social science research on consumers, this paper explores the links between the changing risks and publics addressed by British food policy.

The organic food industry of India is in its inceptive stage and the government has been introducing ample stratagems to flourish this industry. One such initiative is the certification of organic food products in order to ensure the authenticity of the products that are sold under the organic label. This research attempts to check the awareness level and opinion of the organic food consumers about the certification of organic food products. There exists a lack of awareness about these initiatives among the organic food consumers. This study also provides the practical implications of research results for the producers, farmers and marketers and provides suggestions to improve and integrate the organic food market.

AbstractA growing literature in health and nutrition suggests that healthy foods are less available and more expensive at nontraditional store formats such as supercenters, convenience stores, and drug stores. We use Nielsen Homescan data to investigate the relationship between store format and the healthfulness of consumers' grocery shopping. Accounting for a rich set of controls, as well as food retail market structure, we simultaneously estimate the healthfulness of consumers' food purchases and the shares of food expenditure at traditional and nontraditional store formations. We find that healthier food choices are generally associated with higher food expenditure shares at supermarkets and supercenters and lower shares at drug stores and convenience stores. In addition, market concentration has a negative effect on shopping healthfulness.

This study looks at food as a realm of political consumption by examining buycotting and boycotting of foods for ethical, political or environmental reasons in Finland. The results of an Internet-based survey (N = 1021) showed that around half of the respondents often or occasionally both buycotted and boycotted foods. Multinomial regression models indicated that women, the highly educated, the political left, those who donated for charity, those whose food choices were motivated by domestic origin and ethical food production, and those who trusted that consumption choices, institutional actors and the media can advance ethical food production and consumption, were most likely to be active in buycotting and boycotting. Buycotters/boycotters were very active in buying local food but less eager, for instance, to buy organic or Fair Trade products or to reduce the use of meat or milk. The article concludes by critically assessing the complex relationship between buycotting/boycotting and sustainable practices and suggesting that consumers may be more willing to transform their eating patterns if other societal actors, too, make an effort to influence ethical food consumption. ; Peer reviewed