| With the agric-environmental problems in our country becoming more and more serious and food safety problems frequently occurring,organic food and organic agriculture gradually come into the public field of vision.In recent years,our government has introduced several policies to promote the development of organic agriculture and organic food.However,organic food in China still has the problem of being "export-oriented,small domestic market share and low per capita consumption",which also shows that there is huge room for development in the domestic organic food market.Understanding consumers’ perceptions of organic food and their willingness to buy it is a prerequisite and basis for promoting the organic food industry.At present,many domestic scholars have studied consumers’ purchase intention of organic food and its influencing factors.But,few studies have classified organic food into different types to further explore consumers’ perception of different types of organic food and their purchase intention.Based on the classification of organic food into hedonic and utilitarian types,this study systematically and deeply analyzed the influence mechanism of Chinese consumers’ cognition of the two types of organic food on their purchase intention.Based on the SOR model,this paper introduces three stimulus variables: attribute perception,health awareness,openness to change,and two organic variables: hedonic attitude and utilitarianism attitude,as a response variable of organic food purchase intention,the influencing factors model of consumer’s hedonic and utilitarian organic food purchase intention was constructed.In this paper,1539 valid questionnaires were collected and 1246 valid questionnaires were used after screening.Structural equation modeling(SEM)was used to analyze the influence of various factors on consumers’ purchase intention of organic food.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:Firstly,attribute perceptions indirectly influence organic food purchase intentions,mainly through attitudes.Of these,for utilitarian organic food,only hedonistic attitudes mediated the effect of perceived attributes on purchase intentions.Among them,for utilitarian organic food,only hedonistic attitude played an intermediary role in the effect of attribute perception on purchase intention;for hedonistic organic food,both utilitarian and hedonistic attitudes played an intermediary role.At the same time,compared to ordinary food of the same kind,the comprehensive attributes of nutrition,food safety,environmental protection,health and sensory attractiveness of organic food are the key factors that determine consumers’ attitudes toward organic food.Whereas the perceived attributes of utilitarian organic food affect only hedonistic attitudes,the perceived attributes of hedonistic organic food affect both utilitarian and hedonistic attitudes.Secondly,price perception,health awareness and openness to change directly influences the willingness to buy organic food.The stronger the health awareness or openness to change,the higher the purchase intention of organic food.Consumers’ willingness to buy organic food increases with their disposable income,but the price they are willing to pay is much lower than the selling price of organic food in the market.Thirdly,organic labels have a "Halo effect",in which consumers generally perceive organic foods as having better attributes than their regular counterparts,and their perceived ratings become higher after they buy and consume organic foods.In addition,this article found that consumers of organic food and common food types of cognitive differences.They can be broadly divided into two categories: one is purely hedonic/utilitarian products,where the categories of organic food and their regular counterparts are the same,such as organic milk and organic crisps;The other is that the category of organic food is inconsistent with that of ordinary similar food.For example,organic apple is regarded as utilitarian food by consumers,while organic apple is regarded as hedonic food.The results show that the perception of organic food attributes influences the purchase intention through two-dimensional attitudes,and the price perception,OTC(openness to change)and health awareness have direct effects on the purchase intention of organic food,it provides some suggestions for promoting the consumption of organic food. |
