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Towards conscientious food consumption: exploring the values of C zech organic food consumers
Author(s) -
Zagata Lukas
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal of consumer studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.775
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1470-6431
pISSN - 1470-6423
DOI - 10.1111/ijcs.12098
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , hedonism , sustainable consumption , marketing , business , sustainability , consumer behaviour , food consumption , psychology , social psychology , economics , sociology , microeconomics , production (economics) , social science , agricultural economics , ecology , biology
The effects of the organic consumption are often contested with regard to the motives of consumers. Main goal of the paper is to present a theoretical framework that would encapsulate the motives of consumption and enable to identify the conditions for sustainable consumption. In particular, the paper seeks a new perspective that will not be tied to specific ways of life and that could bridge the complex, and often contradictory, motives of consumers. This framework is applied to map the values of organic food consumers in the C zech R epublic with the use of the means‐end approach. The participants identified about 30 attributes related to organic food. Those attributes were divided into 14 basic categories. The study proves that C zech consumers mainly see organics as food ‘without chemicals’ that is favourable to health. At the same time, the identified hierarchical map of values reveals the great importance of the environmentally friendly approach, which results in the reduction of negative impacts and creates an opportunity to balance the relationship between society and nature. Some of the identified motives have pointed out a potential for merging together the egocentric and altruistic motives of ethical consumption in relation to the concept of ‘alternative hedonism’.