Exploring consumers’ behaviour towards short food supply chains

Investigating the drivers of consumers’ behaviour towards purchasing in short food supply chains (SFSCs) and clarifying their relationships, the purpose of this paper is to test the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in order to predict the intention and the behaviour under investigation.

The research includes a literature review of SFSCs. To investigate all the variables (attitudes, subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioural control (PBC) and intention) underlying consumers’ behaviour towards buying in SFSCs, an exploratory survey with a TPB questionnaire and a principal component analysis have been carried out among university students in Italy. Using a system of simultaneous equations, the relationships among variables have been measured.

Findings illustrate that both attitudinal variables (i.e. sustainability, typicality and loyalty), SN and PBC play a key role in the consumers’ intention, that has a predictive effect on behaviour instead of PBC.

This paper fulfils the purpose to explain and predict post-modern consumers’ preferences towards SFSCs, in order to orient policy strategies to support SFSCs.