An Analysis of the Effects of Consumer Characteristics and Consumer Trust on Purchase Intention of Environment-friendly Agricultural Products

소비자 특성과 소비자 신뢰가 친환경농산물의 구매의도에 미치는 영향 분석

Purpose – The environment-friendly agricultural product market in Korea sees continual high growth. Recently, the Korean government has been actively fostering environment-friendly agriculture as an engine of future growth. Korean people have increasingly become more health-conscious and interested in food safety issues. Many distribution and retailing companies have responded with various promotional activities. However, most of these are not strategic and appear to have unsatisfactory outcomes. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest effective marketing strategies for environment-friendly agricultural products. To achieve this aim, the study empirically investigates the ef-fects of consumer characteristics and trust on the purchase intention of environment-friendly agricultural products. Research design, data, methodology - Based on the theory of plan-ned behavior, and previous studies related to the purchase intention and consumption of environment-friendly agricultural products, we set up five study hypotheses. These related to the demographic characteristics of consumers, purchase intention, and behavior of the products. We then set up a study model and four study hypotheses relating to health consciousness, environmental consciousness, consumer trust level, purchase intention, and behavior of the products. The data were col-lected using a questionnaire given to consumers living in Seoul and southern Geonggi Province. The final sample size is 403 and mean age is 44.3. SPSS 15.0 for Windows and Amos 7.0 were used as stat-istical analysis tools. Meaningful results were derived using frequency analysis, correlation analysis, a t-test, and structural equation modeling. Results - Empirical results of this research are as follows. (1) First, it is shown that consumers consider such attributes as intimacy and health to be important when they buy en-vironment-friendly agricultural products. (2) We also found that consumers recognize the value of en-vir