Consumers' perception of the health aspects of organic food

Olga Kutnohorská and Pavel Tomšík
Additional contact information
Olga Kutnohorská: Institute of Chemical Technology, Prague, Czech Republic
Pavel Tomšík: University of Economics and Management, Prague, Czech Republic

Agricultural Economics, 2013, vol. 59, issue 7, 293-299

Abstract: Organic foods are grown using the principles of organic agriculture that are produced, processed and packaged without using chemicals. They have been accepted due to their several perceived benefits over the conventional food. Health aspects of organic food are, in addition to the ethical, environmental, hedonic and "feel good" aspects, the main benefits that the consumers appreciate in organic food. This paper presents the results of a quantitative survey in the Czech organic food market. By using the factor analysis, it showed that the consumer perception of the health benefits of organic food can be viewed from several different angles. There were found three factors that explain 58.42% of variability, which are, based on their relationship with the original items, interpreted as the "knowledge and responsibility", "being aware, but lax" and "health is important, but not related to food". The first factor contains enough knowledge related to the health care, the conviction of the importance of food choice regarding health and the active interest and effort to do something for one's health. The second factor contains enough knowledge related to health care, but is lacking the interest to apply the knowledge and to do something for one's health, and the third factor contains the conviction that health is an important asset, but the perception of the connection between one's health and food is absent.

Keywords: consumer behaviour; factor analysis; marketing mix; quantitative research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/142/2012-AGRICECON.html (text/html)
http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/142/2012-AGRICECON.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:59:y:2013:i:7:id:142-2012-agricecon

DOI: 10.17221/142/2012-AGRICECON

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Ing. Zdeňka Náglová, Ph.D.

More articles in Agricultural Economics from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().