Determinants Affecting Public Intention to Use Micro-Vertical Farming: A Survey Investigation

Abstract

Vertical farming is a new branch of urban agriculture using indoor vertical space and soil-less cultivation technology to obtain agricultural products. Despite its many advantages over traditional farming, it still faces some challenges and obstacles, including high energy consumption and costs, as well as uncertainty and a lack of social acceptance. This study aims to investigate the influence of public acceptance on micro-vertical farming based on the deconstructed theory of planned behavior model. This model is adopted for statistical analysis to reveal the factors and their weights in influencing people’s behavioral intentions. The results indicate that the overall mean of the public’s behavioral intentions to use vertical farming is 3.9, which is above neutral (M = 3.00) but less than positive (M = 4.00). Differences in age, education level, and the living area of the public have significantly impacted behavioral intentions. Meanwhile, the statistical results support the hypotheses concerning the behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control of the model, and also demonstrate that their decomposed belief structures considerably influence the public’s behavioral intentions to use vertical farming. Notably, perceived usefulness is the most critical driving factor in planting using vertical farming. The findings of this study contribute to better predictions of the effects of different elements of behavioral intention on vertical farming at the urban scale, which may provide a basis for decision making in the development of sustainable urban agriculture.