Does gender moderate the purchase intention of organic foods? Theory of reasoned action.

Purpose: This study examines the role of gender as a moderator on the relationships between subjective norm on attitude and purchase intention and attitude on purchase intention by using the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) among organic food consumers.

Methodology: Data is collected using a crowdsourcing platform called Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The respondents are organic food consumers (N = 633) from the US. The proposed model is tested using AMOS by covariance-based structural equation modelling and tested for multi-group moderation.

Findings: The model is fit. The results of multi-group moderation show that gender moderates the two relationships: subjective norm on attitude and attitude on purchase intention, but not the third one, i.e., subjective norm and attitude. All the direct hypotheses are supported. This research found that males and females differ in purchasing intention toward organic food.

Originality: This is the first study in the organic food context that tested subjective norm - attitude, attitude - purchase intention, and subjective norm-attitude using the theory of reasoned action.