Investigating the Attitudes of Consumers and Producers Toward Organic Food and Sustainability in Uttarakhand

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand consumer and producer attitudes of organic food and sustainability with special focus on Uttarakhand State in the India due to the increasing need for sustainable agriculture. Perceptions, the main factors that govern the choice of organic food, and the effect of the social demographic characteristics are other features explored in the research. Questionnaires were self-administered on 500 participants out of which 300 were the consumers and 200 were the producers adopting a quantitative research method. Statistical tests implemented while analyzing data included Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), t-test, and ANOVA in the uses of the SPSS version 27 and AMOS version 24. These findings show a difference, where it depicts that the consumers have a greater purchase intent than the producers, namely 4.1 (mean) with 0.8 standard deviation for consumers and 3.5 (mean) with 0 .9 standard deviation for producers, t = 4.89, p < 0.001. Through analysis of variance results, trough the test F (2,497) = 5.67 at a significance level of 0.003, the results showed that the sustainability consciousness level is highly dependent with the income level and that those with an income of above INR 40,000 had a higher sustainability consciousness level as opposed to the others. Furthermore, analyses conducted with SEM support the hypothesis that sustainability consciousness has significant positive relationship with purchase intentions (τ = 0.51, p < 0.001) as well as the perceived benefits (τ = 0.42, p < 0.001). Thus, the results presented above make a call to effective awareness campaigns and policies to meet the demand for organic foods.