Consumer attitudes towards social farm foods

Abstract

This research aims to investigate to what extent consumers are sensitive to social and health concerns, and if this can be expected to influence the consumer attitudes towards foods produced by social farms. The study area is located in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, in North East Italy. In order to investigate the consumers’ attitudes towards social farm foods, the relationships among three latent constructs, i.e., social consciousness, health consciousness and social farm foods, is analysed. The proposed hypotheses are tested via a structural equation model that is calculated with the linear structural relationship method. A two-stage analysis is adopted, estimating, firstly, the measurement model and, secondly, the structural model. The results support the reliability of the latent constructs on the observed variables and the hypotheses of the proposed model. These results indicate that if consumers are aware of social concerns such as those regarding people with special needs, as well as the fact that the quality of life is also related to the quality of the foods they eat, these consumers could be potential buyers of foods produced by social farms.