Consumer perception of attributes of organic food in Italy: A CUB model study

Organic food, consumers and their buying behaviour are well examined fields of research, although there is a lack of consistent findings on consumers' perception about organic food's quality, in terms of healthiness, safety, and environmental sustainability, and on determinants of perceived quality. This study investigates how consumers perceive the quality of organic food, in terms of environmental sustainability, safety, and healthiness. The study also analyses how and to what extent perceived quality of organic food is influenced by the presence of information related to quality on food products' labels and consumers' socio-demographic profile. A survey has been conducted on a convenience sample of Italian consumers, recruited through a snowball sampling technique. An approach based on a Combination of Uniform and shifted Binomial random variables, named CUB model, is adopted to analyse consumers' perceptions in terms of two latent components, feeling and uncertainty. The CUB model approach is suitable for analyses that involve consumers perception. The results suggest that consumers perceive safety of organic food better than healthiness and environmentally sustainable attributes. Findings also highlight that the presence of specific information on food's label contributes to perceive organic food as healthier, safe, and environmentally sustainable: the more the details on food labels, the higher the consumers' perception. Furthermore, consumers' socio-demographic profile plays a significant role: males and females have a different perception of organic food and younger consumers tend to be more prone to buy and consume organic product.