Accentuating the Interrelation between Consumer Intention and Healthy Packaged Food Selection during COVID-19: A Case Study of Pakistan

Muhammad Zeeshan Zafar, Adnan Maqbool, Lucian-Ionel Cioca, Syed Ghulam Meran Shah and Shahjahan Masud
Additional contact information
Muhammad Zeeshan Zafar: Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Central Punjab, Lahore 54100, Pakistan
Adnan Maqbool: Department of Management Sciences, Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim YarKhan 64200, Pakistan
Lucian-Ionel Cioca: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Faculty of Engineering, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Bd. Victoriei No. 10, 550024 Sibiu, Romania
Syed Ghulam Meran Shah: School of Business Administration, South Western University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China
Shahjahan Masud: School of Business Administration, South Western University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: This study contemplates the factors that influence consumer intention, before and during the eruption of COVID-19, for the selection of healthy packaged food in Pakistan. The extant studies have identified two distinct attitudes of consumers about food label information: one is its usefulness and the second elucidates the avoidance. Hence forth, the current study contributes to the extant literature while signifying both reasons which motivate consumers to read food labels and reasons which discourage consumers from consult food labels at the point of purchase. Moreover, the impact of subjective norms and self-efficacy for healthy packaged food intentions has also been examined for both before the emergence of COVID-19 and during the spread of COVID-19. The underpinning of the proposed model has been justified by the behavioral reasoning theory. The cross-sectional data of 14,455 students has was collected from 10 universities through Microsoft Teams and Zoom. AMOS 21 was employed for the final analysis. The results indicate that before COVID-19 the subjective norms and self-efficacy were not the stimulating factors for the selection of healthy packaged food. On the contrary, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the subjective norms and self-efficacy divulged a significant effect. Moreover, the reasons to consult food labels are positively significant whereas the reasons to avoid food labels have negatively affected the consumer, both before COVID-19 and during COVID-19 outbreak, while endorsing healthy packaged food. Conclusively, COVID-19 has been proved to be a deterrent for unhealthy packaged food lovers while being a blessing for healthy packaged food.

Keywords: COVID-19; attitude; subjective norms; self-efficacy; intention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/6/2846/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/6/2846/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:6:p:2846-:d:514782

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().