Mediating Role of Consumer Identity between Factors Influencing Purchase Intention and Actual Behavior in Organic Food Consumption in Thailand

The aims of this research are to explore the relationship between the factors influencing purchase intention and actual behaviors of Thai consumers of organic food, and to observe the mediating role of consumer identity between the factors: attitude toward organic food, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, and purchase intentions. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was adopted as a theoretical framework which contained the role of consumer identity as a mediator. Data was collected from 400 Thai consumers of organic foods. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data through AMOS package. The results of the data analysis indicate that the consumer identity plays a full mediating role between independent variables (i.e. health concern, subjective norm, organic food familiarity and organic food literacy) and purchase intention. The organic food literacy is the main determinant of consumer identity with the highest coefficient value, whilst the organic food familiarity was placed as the second important determinant of consumer identity. Moreover, the results highlight the strong influence of intention on actual behavior of organic food purchase. Accordingly, this study thoroughly captures the TPB model and strengthens it by confirming relationship between purchase intention and actual purchase behaviors in organic food consumption and revealed that actual purchase behavior is significantly affected by the purchase intention of Thai consumers of organic food.