Consumers’ sustainable food choices: Antecedents and motivational imbalance

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Highlights

  • Attitude, PBC, personal norm, and activism are all important factors in promoting sustainable food choices.

  • Subjective norm influence was consistently found to be non-significant in the general model.

  • Motivational imbalance has negative effects on sustainable food choices.

  • Motivationally imbalanced consumers showed consistently weaker intentions than those who experience motivational balance.

  • Not all scenarios of motivational imbalance cause similar effects.

Abstract

This paper examines the antecedents of sustainable food choices by consumers and investigates the differences between consumers based on their state of motivational imbalance. A sample of 609 respondents from Egypt took part in the study. Data were analyzed using a two-step approach of confirmatory factor analysis and structural models. The results indicate that attitudes, perceived behavioral control, personal norms, and activism are significant antecedents of consumers’ intention toward sustainable food. However, the data reveal a non-significant effect of subjective norms. Motivational imbalance has significant moderating effects, such that consumers who experience motivational imbalance showed consistently weaker intentions than consumers who experience motivational balance. Furthermore, there are significant differences between consumers under various scenarios of motivational imbalance. Specifically, the comparison of different motivational conflicts showed that attitude–subjective norm and attitude–activism conflicts cause the most substantial negative impact on consumer intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Graphical abstract

This schematic representation depicts different scenarios of motivational imbalance. Each scenario was created by grouping consumers on the basis of only two antecedents at a time (with attitude always included). Balanced motivations consistently showed stronger intentions across all scenarios. Further, within the imbalanced groups, two additional scenarios of imbalance were examined based on an opposite combination (i.e., high-low vs. low-high) of the two motives.

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Introduction

Consumers’ food choices at restaurants have an impact on not only the individual consumer and business success but also the environment. Many studies emphasizing the environmental impact of these choices reveal that current restaurant operations have a detrimental effect (Hu et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2015; Wang and Wang, 2016). The restaurant business has grown quickly in the past two decades, and continued growth is expected. Thus, appeals have increased for sustainable food service that considers both the consumers’ needs and the planet’s boundary limits. In the modern marketing era, in which business success is subject to identifying and meeting consumers’ needs, consumers’ sustainable food choices represent an important element for expanding sustainable food service. In other words, each time consumers choose a given sustainable menu item, they are inherently supporting that line of production. Therefore, understanding the determinants of sustainable food choices from the consumers’ perspective is important.

The food service literature has a plethora of studies on consumers’ intentions to choose sustainable restaurants and organic menu items (e.g., Dewald et al., 2014; Hu et al., 2010; Jang et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2013; Kwok et al., 2016; Namkung and Jang, 2017; Shin et al., 2018; Wang and Wang, 2016). These studies have mainly focused on the reasoned action approach and therefore can be classified into two streams. The first considers self-interest motives the best predictor of sustainable behaviors. If, for example, someone expects desirable personal outcomes (e.g., health, approval of others) from sustainable dining, it is more likely that he or she will choose this option. This stream is based mainly on the theory of planned behavior (TPB: Ajzen, 1991). The second stream suggests that moral motives are more pertinent to the sustainable domain, in which people consider not only personal gains but also others’ well-being. This stream is based on normative theories (Schwartz, 1977; Stern et al., 1999).

However, although sustainable food choice is a complex decision in which many factors can influence consumer choice (Hu et al., 2010; Jang et al., 2011; Namkung and Jang, 2013), only a few food service studies have combined the moral and self-interest motives (Kim et al., 2013; Shin et al., 2018). Moreover, Sheth et al. (2011) argue that to date, research on sustainable consumer behavior has focused on personal or self-consequential benefits while neglecting the community and environmental dimensions. Thus, in line with a recent theoretical development that proposes individual activism as an important determinant of sustainable behaviors (Elhoushy and Jang, 2019), this study addresses this gap by examining the impact of activism: a distinct type of environmental attitude or mindset, on sustainable food choices at restaurants.

Researchers have argued that individuals may experience a state of motivational imbalance in which they believe a particular choice has positive personal outcomes but is subject to disapproval by important social referents (Ajzen and Kruglanski, 2019) or that choice does not comply with one’s moral standards (Sparks et al., 2001). Simply put, individuals may have conflicting motives when making a single choice. For example, an individual may feel morally obligated to choose sustainable food but concurrently hold negative beliefs about the taste of the food. These conflicting views can lead to a state of dissonance due to the differences in cognitions (Thøgersen, 2004). Recently, researchers have claimed that such situations of conflict can generate further ramifications on one’s actions and behaviors (Ajzen and Kruglanski, 2019; Kruglanski et al., 2018), though few studies have addressed motivational imbalance in this context. In particular, no studies, to the author’s knowledge, have examined the outcomes of holding conflicting motivations in the domain of sustainable food choices.

Further, the extant literature on sustainable consumer behaviors in general and sustainable food choices particularly is geographically concentrated in developed countries (see: Hu et al., 2010; Jang et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2013; Kwok et al., 2016; Namkung and Jang, 2017; Shin et al., 2018), while studies in less developed regions are very scarce (see: Elhoushy and Lanzini, 2020, for a review). This lack of research justifies the increasing calls by scholars (e.g., Morren and Grinstein, 2016; Shin et al., 2018) for further studies in other cultural and economic conditions. The current study, therefore, focuses on a sample of consumers from Egypt: a populated country with a distinctive culture and economic conditions. As such, this study addresses, in part, the need for examining the efficacy of Western-based models in predicting consumer behaviors in non-Western cultures.

Overall, the current study integrates and examines the impact of five antecedents—namely, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control (PBC), personal norms, and activism—on the intention to choose sustainable food at restaurants. In addition, this study investigates the subsequent outcomes of holding imbalanced motivations across the five proposed antecedents on intentions. More specifically, the objectives of this paper are twofold: (1) to examine the factors that motivate Egyptian consumers to choose sustainable food at restaurants and (2) to investigate the differences between individuals based on their state of motivational imbalance, under the conjecture that individuals who show consistent motivations will have greater intentions to choose sustainable food than those who experience motivational conflicts.

Section snippets

Sustainable food choice

Scholars repeatedly note the lack of a standard definition for sustainable restaurants (Kim et al., 2015), and several terms are used interchangeably in the literature, including “sustainable,” “green,” “eco-friendly,” and “environmentally friendly” (Jang et al., 2015, 2011; Kim et al., 2016, 2013). However, most scholars agree that these restaurants can be identified by their menu offerings and environmental practices. For example, Jang et al. (2011, p. 804) describe a green restaurant as “one

Sample setting

This study surveyed a convenience sample of Egyptian consumers who are (1) aged 18 years or older and (2) eat out at restaurants at least once per month. Of the 623 responses received, 14 were eliminated after data screening, leaving 609 valid responses for further analyses. This sample size is ideal considering that 10–20 cases for each item is a reasonable criterion (Kline, 2011). As Table 1 shows, respondents were 38.9% male and 61.1% female and ranged in age from 18 to 70 years (the

CFA

Using maximum likelihood estimation, CFA was conducted. The initial model showed a reasonable fit to the data (χ2 = 636.179, df = 237, p < .001; χ2/df = 2.684; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .053; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.941; Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = 0.931). However, two survey items from the PBC construct had poor factor loadings. Thus, these items were eliminated. After exclusion of these items, a second CFA conducted with the remaining items showed good fit to

Theoretical implications

This study examined the joint effect of five antecedents—attitudes, subjective norms, PBC, personal norms, and activism—on intentions to choose sustainable food. In addition, the study explored the differences between consumers based on their state of motivational imbalance.

Consistent with previous studies showing that extended TPB frameworks have superior explanatory power in contexts of sustainable decisions (Jang et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2016; Shin et al., 2018). Results of this study lend

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Prof. SooCheong (Shawn) Jang for his guidance to this work and the two independent reviewers for their valuable comments.

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