The food you can trust: The moderating role of age in the relationship between consumer values and organic food trust

Abstract

With no universal definition for organic or sustainability label claims on food products, it is challenging for shoppers to know which organic produce to trust. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of consumer trust is critical and instrumental in encouraging sustainable buying choices. We operationalize consumer trust in organic food as encompassing cognitive particularized trust and affective anonymous trust. We test how the relationship between consumer values and trust varies in conjunction with previous organic food consumption experience and consumer age on a sample of 1011 Australian consumers. The findings reveal that values related to self-symbolism and self-transcendence are positively associated with trust, whereas values related to security and openness to change show no relationship with trust. Furthermore, it was found that consumer age strengthens the consumer values–trust link in the case of self-symbolic and security values.