Impact of consumer global-local identity on attitude towards and intention to buy local foods

Abstract

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) has profoundly affected the food systems, leading to consumer concerns about the lack of reliability and safety of global foods and a growing trend towards consuming local foods. Consumers have formed multicultural identities, such as global identity and local identity, under the influences of global and local consumer culture. This study develops a conceptual model to examine the impact of consumer global-local identity, locavorism, and consumer xenocentrism on consumer attitudes towards and intentions to buy local foods during Covid-19 crisis. We conducted an online survey in China that measured the constructs using established scales. Using structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses, we find that: a higher degree of global identity will lead to a higher degree of consumer xenocentrism, whereas a higher degree of local identity will lead to a lower degree of consumer xenocentrism; local identity significantly and positively predicts locavorism; contrary to the prediction, the impact of global identity on locavorism is not significant; a higher degree of consumer xenocentrism will lead to a lower degree of attitude towards buying local foods. Theoretically, our findings contribute to the understanding of literature on local food consumption, consumer global-local identity, and consumer xenocentrism. Local food marketers can obtain practical insights based on our findings.