The effects of socio-psychological and technological factors on sustainable consumption behavior

The increase in the world population, the excessive consumption resulting from this increase and its damage to the nature are the most important threats towards the sustainability of human life. It is inevitable for people to change and reduce behavior harmful to the environment or adopt new behaviors for a sustainable life. By adopting sustainable production and consumption patterns, the needs of current generations will be met and the natural resources will be preserved and transferred to the future generations. The increase in both the population and the demand for food, have caused an increase in the direct and indirect negative results of agricultural activities to the environment. With sustainable agricultural practices, it is possible to reduce the damage given to the environment and increase the quality of food products. The aim of this study is to reveal the effects of environmental and socio-psychological factors on consumer intention towards the output of sustainable agricultural practices, which is organic food consumption. The research model is formed by adopting an empirically validated Norm Activationn Model (Schwartz,1977) and merging it with the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). Environmental values, environmental knowledge, social influence and habits, which are other important factors explaining sustainable consumption behavior, were included in the reserach model to broaden the scope of study. The moderating effect of social influence between environmental knowledge and awareness of the environmental consequences of one's behavior has also been investigated. In this study, mixed data collection method have been used. The data collected for the qualitative research applied through in-depth interviews and telephone interviews and the related literature studies drew attention to the gap between attitude and behavior. Based on these findings, the behavioral intention towards organic food consumption was examined within the scope of the quantitative research. 682 consumers responded to the online survey conducted for the quantitative study and the data from the participants were tested with structural equation modeling using the Smart PLS program. According to the the results of the analysis attitudes, habits, norms and perceived behavioral control factors had significant effects on the behavioral intention towards organic food consumption. Findings supported that the altruistic, biospheric and egoistic value motives had significant affect on the awareness of consequences of behavior. It has been determined that, when environmental knowledge is associated with the human health, consumers become aware of the environmental effects of their behavior. As a result of the structural equation model analysis, it was concluded that the social impact variable did not have a moderator effect among the awareness of consequences and environmental knowledge. Keywords: Sustainability, sustainable consumption, organic food consumption, theory of planned behavior, norm activation model, intention