Perception, Trust, and Motivation in Consumer Behavior for Organic Food Acquisition: An Exploratory Study

A sustainable healthy diet aims to assess human well-being in all life stages at the physical, mental, and social levels, protect environmental resources, and preserve bio-diversity. This work investi-gates the sociodemographic factors, knowledge, trust, and motivations involved in organic food acquisition behavior through a cross-sectional observational study using an online survey via the Google Forms platform, conducted from 01 March to 31 May 2024. The questionnaire was orga-nized into 3 main sections detailing the participants' sociodemographic profile, assessing their perception of organic food, and analyzing eco-food acquisition and consumption behavior. Our findings show that suitably informed people with high educational levels (academic and post-college) report significant satisfaction with organic food consumption (S4 and S5). There is also a considerable correlation between ages 25-65, moderate to high satisfaction (S3-S5), and "yes" for eco-food recommendations. Moderate to high satisfaction levels (S3-S5) are also associated with medium confidence in eco-food labels (C3) and moderate to high income. Our results show that monthly income and residence are not essential factors in higher price perception. Insignificant price variation perception correlated with C4 and weekly acquisition. Similar price perception substan-tially correlates with C5 and daily acquisition. Lower price perception strongly correlates with minimal confidence and monthly acquisition. Organic foods have evident benefits in obesity treatment and BMI diminution; however, obese respondents exhibited minimal satisfaction and opted for "abstention" from eco-food recommendations. The findings suggest that investing in public information, educational campaigns, and other strategies to support local organic food producers is essential for increasing interest in eco-food consumption. The present study could en-rich the current scientific database with data collected and a deep analysis of knowledge, percep-tion, attitude, trust, and motivation involved in Romanian consumer behavior for eco-food acqui-sition. Further exploratory studies will be conducted on older participants with different chronic diseases to investigate all aspects of organic food consumption.