Bridging Awareness, Acceptance, and Purchase Behavior in Eco-Friendly Packaging Choices for Agri-Food Products

Abstract

Background and objective: Plastic packaging waste has emerged as one of the most pressing environmental challenges worldwide. While plastic packaging provides significant functional benefits such as product protection, convenience, and preservation of quality its extensive use raises serious concerns regarding long-term environmental sustainability. Consequently, promoting the adoption of eco-friendly packaging has become a critical objective in the agri-food sector. To effectively encourage this transition, it is essential to understand the psychological factors that shape consumer decision-making. This study aims to identify the key determinants of consumers' purchase intentions for agri-food products with eco-friendly packaging, focusing on cognitive, affective, and conative psychological dimensions. Methods: Cheonan was selected as the study area due to its mixed urban-rural characteristics, which provide a diverse socioeconomic context for analyzing consumer behavior. Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify underlying psychological dimensions related to eco-friendly packaging. Three factors, identified as Awareness, Acceptance, and Behavior, were extracted. These factors were subsequently incorporated into multiple regression and ordered logit models to examine their relative influence on consumers' purchase intentions. Results: The analysis identified three distinct psychological factors: Awareness (cognitive dimension), Acceptance (affective dimension), and Behavior (conative dimension). Empirical results from both multiple regression and ordered logit models consistently showed that Acceptance and Behavior exert significantly stronger effects on purchase intentions than Awareness. This indicates that affective and conative components play a more substantial role in shaping consumer decisions regarding eco-friendly packaging than purely cognitive considerations. Conclusion: The findings suggest that consumer adoption of eco-friendly packaging in the agri-food sector is driven more by emotional acceptance and behavioral tendencies than by awareness alone. By integrating cognitive, affective, and conative perspectives, this study provides practical implications for policymakers and industry stakeholders in designing targeted communication strategies, incentive programs, and policy interventions to accelerate the adoption of eco-friendly packaging.