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Abstract
This study examined the usefulness of integrating measures of affective and moral
attitudes into the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)-model in predicting purchase
intentions of organic foods. Moral attitude was operationalised as positive self-rewarding
feelings of doing the right thing. Questionnaire data were gathered in three countries:
Italy (N=202), Finland (N=270) and UK (N=200) in March 2004. Questions focussed on
intentions to purchase organic apples and organic ready-to-cook pizza instead of their
conventional alternatives. Data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling
by simultaneous multi-group analysis of the three countries. Along with attitudes,
moral attitude and subjective norms explained considerable shares of variances in
intentions. The relative influences of these variables varied between the countries,
such that in the UK and Italy moral attitude rather than subjective norms had stronger
explanatory power. In Finland it was other way around. Inclusion of moral attitude
improved the model fit and predictive ability of the model, although only marginally
in Finland. Thus the results partially support the usefulness of incorporating moral
measures as well as affective items for attitude into the framework of TPB.