Students' Intention towards Organic Foods Purchase: Application of the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior

The purpose of this study was to develop a systematic model for assessing students’ intention towards organic food purchase through the application of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In addition to the original components of the TPB, this study has explored constructs such as moral attitude, health consciousness and environmental concerns on students’ consumption behavior. In this research, information was collected from 420 agricultural students adopting the convenience sampling method. A research instrument was a questionnaire which its content validity was confirmed by a panel of experts at the University of Tehran and Tarbiat Modarres University. Also, its reliability, using related coefficients, met satisfied threshold value. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling to determine the causal relationship between research components. The results showed that the developed TPB explains the willingness to purchase organic food among students (R2=0.629). Among the structures of the developed model, two added constructs including moral attitude and health consciousness have a direct and significant effect on the willingness to purchase organic food. Also, environmental concerns with affecting the moderating variable indirectly affect the student's willingness to purchase. Therefore, the present study, by adding new constructs and structures in the TPB, has improved the predictive power of the proposed framework in determining the students' intention for organic food purchase behavior.