Department of Nutrition, Chung Shan Medical University, No. 110, Sec. 1, Jianguo N. Rd., Taichung City 40201, Taiwan.
Department of Health Diet and Industry Management, Chung Shan Medical University, No. 110, Sec. 1, Jianguo N. Rd., Taichung City 40201, Taiwan.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Jul 6;15(7):1431. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15071431.
Food system and food safety have drawn spontaneous global attention due to the effect of substantial environmental concerns. Three billion tons of food are wasted every year, estimated as being a third of all produced food. The production of much of this waste is directly linked to the unwillingness to sell, purchase, and consume suboptimal food that have deviated from regular products in terms of appearance standards, date labeling, or damaged packaging. Yet empirical research on this issue is scarce. This study aims to develop an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) research model, which includes environmental concern and sensory appeal to predict consumers' purchase intention to suboptimal foods. A total of 539 respondents collected in Taiwan as data input. The empirical results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that consumers' attitude was the main predictor of their intention to purchase suboptimal foods. Interestingly, this research showed that both perceived behavioral control and subjective norms were not significant predictors of intention. Furthermore, adding environmental concern and sensory appeal as the additional constructs to the TPB significantly increased the explanatory power of the standard model. These findings provide important insights for suboptimal food and useful recommendations for marketing channels, suggesting that promotion of suboptimal food may be the key to potential business.
由于环境问题引起了广泛关注，食品系统和食品安全已经引起了全球的自发关注。每年有 30 亿吨食物被浪费，据估计这是所有生产食物的三分之一。这些浪费的大部分直接与不愿销售、购买和消费不符合外观标准、日期标签或包装损坏的次优食品有关。然而，关于这个问题的实证研究还很少。本研究旨在开发一个扩展的计划行为理论（TPB）研究模型，该模型包括环境关注和感官吸引力，以预测消费者对次优食品的购买意向。共收集了 539 名在台湾的受访者作为数据输入。结构方程模型（SEM）的实证结果表明，消费者的态度是购买次优食品意向的主要预测因素。有趣的是，本研究表明，感知行为控制和主观规范都不是意向的显著预测因素。此外，将环境关注和感官吸引力作为 TPB 的附加构念添加到标准模型中，显著提高了标准模型的解释能力。这些发现为次优食品提供了重要的见解，并为营销渠道提供了有用的建议，表明推广次优食品可能是潜在业务的关键。
