Psychosocial predictors of organic consumption behavior: A descriptive study from the perspective of integrated behavioral model

In this study, organic poultry consumption behavior was examined according to Integrated Behavior Model (Glanz, Rimer, & Wisvanath, 2008), which is a health behavior model that comprehensively addresses the individual motivations behind health behaviors such as attitudes and behavioral intentions. According to the BDM, the intention to perform a behavior is the strongest predictor of the behavior, while this said intention is predicted by attitudes, subjective norms and personal agency. Furthermore, knowledge and skills to perform the behavior, salience of the behavior, environmental constraints and habit are the other pedictors of the behavior. As the first step, a pilot study was conducted to obtain data for developing a scale aimed at measuring the behavior according to BDM. In the main study data were collected from a total of 310 participants aged 18-65 years. For the main study firstly the reliability and validity of Organic Poultry Consumption Behavior Battery was tested. The results of this test reveal that the Instrumental Attitude, Experiential Attitude, Subjective Norm (supportive), Subjective Norm (against), Self-Efficacy and Environmental Constraits scales meet the psychometric parameters of the study. Finally, in the last step, the assumptions of BDM were tested by conducting Linear Hierarchical Regression Analysis by controlling psychosocial characteristics and psychological components such as health anxiety, orthorexia and social desirability level that are related to the behavior. According to the findings, after controlling education levels and parenthood, the strongest predictor of the organic poultry consumption behavior was found as the intention to perform the behavior, while the intention was predicted by the self-efficacy beliefs of the participants. Additionally, it was observed that the organic poultry consumption behavior decreased as the environmental constraints about the behavior increased.