Abstract:
Sri Lankan consumers perceive organic food as healthy, environmental friendly,
safety and affordable food which influencing towards higher purchase intention rate;
but, the actual purchase of organic food seems to be very low. Since the existing
literature also paid less attention to this area, the purpose of this paper is to examine
the young consumers’ perception towards actual purchase of organic food in Colombo
District. A quantitative method based on Theory of Planned Behavior was used
through a positivistic and a deductive research approach in order to test the
hypotheses of study and data were collected from 298 young consumers in Colombo
District by using convenience sampling. Correlation, regression analyses, and Sobel
test were employed to analyze the data. The results revealed that young consumers’
perception is a positive influential factor on purchase intention and actual purchase of
organic food in Colombo District; while the purchase intention mediates the
relationship between those two variables. The present study is one of the few studies
which apply the mediating effect of purchase intention towards young consumers’
actual purchase behavior of organic food in Sri Lanka. The findings have implications
for companies of the organic food industry, retailers and market regulatory agencies.
The study also provides guidelines and suggestions for retailers and marketers who
are dealing with the organic foods and aim at expanding the organic food market.
