Review of Organic Produce Purchasing in Canada: An Abstract

Abstract

The organic food industry has grown continuously over the last two decades and is frequently regarded as “one of the biggest growth markets in the food industry” (Hughner et al. 2007, pg. 2). In the last 15 years, the “market for organic food sales have increased fourfold” with the largest growth in North America, accounting for more than half of all international sales (Golijan and Dimitrijevic 2018, pg. 129). In Canada, the 2017 The State of Organics report indicated that the Canadian organic sector “was estimated to be worth $4.7 billion in 2015, up from $3.5 billion in 2013” (COTA 2017, pg. 6) pointing at the strong growth perspective. Although the Canadian organic landscape is growing strong, academic research on the subject is minimal: “geographical coverage of the analyzed evidence is, by and large, limited to Europe” as their industries have been advancing at faster rates (Thogersen 2010, pg. 172). As the result of the effects of different market and legal factors in different countries, there are identifiable differences in organic food consumption among countries, which calls for further research into under-analyzed countries like Canada (Golijan and Dimitrijevic 2018, pg. 126). Accordingly, the aim of study is to conduct an in-depth literature review on organic produce consumer behaviour, focusing on Canada in an attempt to broaden the knowledge of country-specific organic consumption patterns. In doing this, a research model is also proposed using Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model, where future insight gleaned may suggest improvements to Canadian organic governance to promote more sustainable organic consumption amongst Canadians (Ajzen 1991). The review paper examines three key areas of organic produce consumer behaviour: motivations to purchase organic produce (i.e. health concerns, food safety concerns, environmental concerns, lifestyle, and ethics), barriers to purchase organic produce (i.e. affordability and availability) and the demographic implications of organic produce consumers. First, findings from relevant organic consumer behaviour studies, regardless of geographical focus, are reviewed in the paper. Then, the focus is narrowed to any Canada-specific organic studies published to collect a basis of all Canadian organic knowledge known to-date. The findings from the review outlined above were used to propose a new research model using the TPB. For this proposed model, four constructs were developed specifically from this study; they are consumer lifestyle (diet, family, state of health), consumer values (health and environmental concerns, culture and self-identity), perceived product affordability (income, produce price) and consumer consumption methods (food usage, involvement, frequency). The proposed research model then seeks to examine the effects of these four new constructs on the TPB constructs: attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, intention and behaviour.