A Study on Eating-Out Style and Acceptance Intention of Artificial Seasoning: The Moderating Role of Consumers’ Psychological Value

This study aims to investigate the effect of eating-out types on the acceptance intention of artificial seasoning when consumers eat out at restaurants. Eating-out types considered to be typical when customers visit restaurants, such as the food-exploratory type, healthoriented type, and convenience-seeking type, were studied. Based on the research of previous studies, three eating-out types were selected for the study, which were “food-exploratory”, “convenience-seeking”, “health-oriented”. This study was conducted by AMOS 22.0 with 300 questionnaires, and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used for examining the hypotheses as statistical method in this study. As a result, eating-out types such as “food-exploratory” and “convenience-seeking” were found to significantly affect the acceptance intention of artificial seasoning. However, consumers’ acceptance intention of artificial seasoning differed depending on their consumption value. The path coefficients from food-exploratory type and health-oriented type to acceptance intention were more significant in the hedonic-oriented group than the utilitarian-oriented group. The results of this study suggest eating-out types relate to acceptance intention of artificial seasoning and provide meaningful implications for consumers’ psychological consumption value when they consider artificial seasoning.