An analysis of farmers’ intention to use green pesticides: The application of the extended theory of planned behavior and health belief model

The Health Belief Model (HBM; Rosenstock, 1966) was constructed to explain which beliefs should be targeted in communication campaigns to cause positive health behaviors. The model specifies that if individuals perceive a negative health outcome to be severe, perceive themselves to be susceptible to it, perceive the benefits to behaviors that reduce the likelihood of that outcome to be high, and perceive the barriers to adopting those behaviors to be low, then the behavior is likely for those individuals. A meta-analysis of 18 studies (2,702 subjects) was conducted to determine whether measures of these beliefs could longitudinally predict behavior. Benefits and barriers were consistently the strongest predictors. The length of time between measurement of the HBM beliefs and behavior, prevention versus treatment behaviors, and drug-taking regimens versus other behaviors were identified as moderators of the HBM variables' predictive power. Based on the weakness of two of the predictors, the continued use of the direct effects version of the HBM is not recommended.

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.