Factors associated with purchasing intention for safe vegetables in Kesbewa Divisional Secretariat Division

Abstract

In modern Sri Lankan context safety of the food has become a major role in the society because there were many food poisoning cases. In most of the time vegetables in the market have contaminated with many synthetic materials like pesticides. Since the vegetables are growing only in certain areas of the country, vegetable have to transport directly to the main economic centers and then distributed for other retailers. In the present context, customers are highly concern on purchasing safe vegetables, if they are available in the market. Anyhow, the purchasing intension of vegetable is varied in each customer depending on many factors. Therefore, this research was conducted to analyze the factors affecting on purchasing intention of safe vegetables in Piliyandala city area by using theory of planned behavior and give suggestions to the interested parties such as vegetable vendors in the area to make better performances. Piliyandala city area was selected as study location concerning its location as semi urbanized area belongs to the Kesbewa DS division and representation of multi ethnic groups. The research model is consisting with dependent variable, purchasing intention and four independent variables namely health consciousness, attitude towards safe vegetables, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Data collection has been done by five-point Likert scale questionnaires from 110 residents in Piliyandala and analyzed by using SPSS 25.0 software. The main conclusions have taken from descriptive, frequency, regression and factor analysis. However, the findings indicated that out of four factors health consciousness, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have shown a positive impact on purchasing intention towards safe vegetables. Perceived behavioral control showed the highest impact towards purchasing intention. This study is significant to guide the farmers, producers and retailers to implement better marketing approaches focus on consumer behavior as well as consumers to persuade towards purchasing safe vegetables. Policy makers including government should focus on aware the people and promote safety concern in vegetables in the market since food safety is critical topic in the society now a days.