بررسي نگرش مصرف كنندگان و عوامل موثر بر پذيرش محصولات كشاورزي ارگانيك

An Investigation of the Consumer Attitudes and Effective Factors in Adoption of Agricultural Organic Products

Nowadays, there is a growing trend in demand for agricultural organic products as driven by consumersʹ perceptions of the quality and safety of these products as well as by the positive impacts of organic agricultural practices on the environment. The main purpose of this descriptive - survey research was to investigate consumer attitudes on Agricultural Organic Products (AOP), and the effective factors influencing their adoption of organic products. The target population consisted of consumers from (five provinces) in Iran. To select sample population, randomized sampling was employed, sample size being formed of 416 consumers. The questionnaireʹs validity was confirmed by a panel of faculty members of Tehran University. Reliability was employed through Cronbachsʹ Alpha with a=.818 showing the reliability of the questionnaire as acceptable. SPSS/win software was employed for data analysis, while factor analysis method being employed to identify the explaining factors of dependent variableʹs variance. Results showed that the most important factors in perception of OPs were awareness of consumers regarding disadvantages of pesticides and chemicals. The most important purchase criteria were good taste and safety. The most important method of presentation was to supply the products supply with appropriate labels. In addition, the results showed that four effective factors explained 69.7 percent of the total variance. The first factor was the educational one with 22.54% as the most important factor, the rest being supportive (19.8%), monitoring (15.3%) and economical (11.03%).