A Study on Young Consumers' Perception Towards Actual Purchase of Organic Vegetables : Mediating Effect of Consumers' Purchase Intention

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.