Does gender moderate the purchase intention of organic foods? Theory of reasoned action

Raghava R Gundala; Nishad Nawaz; Harindranath R M; Kirubaharan Boobalan; Vijaya Kumar Gajenderan

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10478

Does gender moderate the purchase intention of organic foods? Theory of reasoned action

Heliyon. 2022 Aug 31;8(9):e10478. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10478. eCollection 2022 Sep.

Authors

Raghava R Gundala¹, Nishad Nawaz², Harindranath R M³, Kirubaharan Boobalan⁴, Vijaya Kumar Gajenderan⁵

Affiliations

¹ University of Wisconsin - Parkside, 900 Wood Road, Kenosha, 53144, WI, USA.
² Department of Business Management, College of Business Administration, Kingdom University, Bahrain.
³ School of Entrepreneurship and Management Studies, SRM University - AP, Amaravati, India.
⁴ SSN School of Management, SSN Institutions, Chennai, India.
⁵ Department of Commerce, Sir Theagaraya College, Chennai, India.

Abstract

Purpose: This study examines the role of gender as a moderator on the relationships between subjective norm on attitude and purchase intention and attitude on purchase intention by using the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) among organic food consumers.

Methodology: Data is collected using a crowdsourcing platform called Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The respondents are organic food consumers (N = 633) from the US. The proposed model is tested using AMOS by covariance-based structural equation modelling and tested for multi-group moderation.

Findings: The model is fit. The results of multi-group moderation show that gender moderates the two relationships: subjective norm on attitude and attitude on purchase intention, but not the third one, i.e., subjective norm and attitude. All the direct hypotheses are supported. This research found that males and females differ in purchasing intention toward organic food.

Originality: This is the first study in the organic food context that tested subjective norm - attitude, attitude - purchase intention, and subjective norm-attitude using the theory of reasoned action.

Keywords: Attitude; Gender; Multi-group moderation; Organic food purchase intention; Subjective norm.