Is trust crucial? – The moderating role of trust in the relationship between motivation and intention to buy healthy and sustainable foods
Abstract
Promoting healthy and sustainable food choices is part of the Green Transition of the food sector, which is a policy goal of national and international bodies. Health and sustainability properties of food products are credence characteristics, and their role in consumer choices is therefore contingent on the availability and trustworthiness of information about these characteristics. Even when consumers are motivated to make healthy and sustainable choices, this motivation may not translate into intentions to make such choices when consumers do not trust food chain actors. Lack of trust could therefore be a partial explanation of the motivation-intention-behaviour gap widely discussed in the social psychology literature. In the present study, motivation and intention for making healthy food choices, for making sustainable food choices, and for adopting new and innovative products are measured and the role of trust is investigated. Trust is measured as trust in farmers/manufacturers/retailers/authorities, as beliefs in trustworthiness of these actors, and as general social trust. Data are from the TrustTracker project, where data were collected in 2019 and 2020 in 13 European countries. Results indicate that trust moderates the relationship between motivation and intention for sustainable choices and for the adoption of new and innovative products, but not for healthy choices. The results have implications for measures aimed at building consumer trust as part of the Green Transition.
Event details
Date: Thursday, Oct 21st
Time: noon to 1 p.m.
Location: Cooley Ballroom at ASU Polytechnic
Sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business Leaders Academy at ASU Polytechnic
Presented by
Klaus G. Grunert
Professor of Marketing
Aarhus University
About
Klaus G. Grunert is Professor of Marketing at Aarhus University, and is the founder of the MAPP Research Center. He has done extensive research in the area of consumer behaviour, mostly with regard to food, and in making consumer insight useful in areas like new product development, market communication and public policy campaigns aimed at healthy and sustainable eating or other socially desirable behaviours. In particular, he has done research on quality perception and food choice, healthy eating, effects of nutrition labeling and of health claims, public acceptance of biotechnology, on how insight into consumer behaviour feeds into product development processes in food producing companies, and on competence development in the food industry. As director of MAPP, he has carried out numerous collaboration projects with the food industry, including several pan-European studies, and has participated in or led many EU FP projects. Having an h-index of 86, he is the author of 12 books, more than 200 academic papers in international refereed journals and numerous other publications, and ranks among the 2% most cited researchers in the world. Klaus is a past president of the European Marketing Academy and was professor of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management.
