Understanding the relationship between age and seafood consumption: the mediating role of attitude, health involvement and convenience

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Abstract

This study discusses and analyses the relationship between the consumer's chronological age and frequent consumption of seafood, and how this relationship is mediated by three psychological variables: Attitudes/preferences towards eating seafood, involvement in healthy eating and perceived time used to prepare meals (convenience). This is done by cross-sectional data and with the assumption that people's life course is important in modelling food consumption behaviour. By using structural equation modelling, we were able to estimate the strength and direction of direct and indirect relationships between external, internal and behavioural variables as proposed in general attitude theory. Age is positively related to the frequency of seafood consumption. This relationship is mediated by attitudes toward eating seafood, health involvement and perceived convenience. In developing and testing conceptual models which integrate the relationship between age and psychological mediator variables, we may approach a deeper understanding of the more complex relationship between external and internal psychological variables in people's selection of food over their life course.

Introduction

Age is one important variable in explaining food cognition/attitude (Rappoport, Peters, Downey, McCann, & Huff-Corzine, 1993) or food consumption (Axelson, 1986, Nu, et al., 1996). Age is also suggested to be an important determinant of seafood consumption behaviour (Grunert, et al., 1996, Myrland et al., 2000, Olsen, 1989). Within the cross-sectional and life-course perspective, we find at least two different streams of research with the objective of explaining variation in individual food consumption behaviour. An econometric tradition tries to explain variation in food choice based mostly on socio-economic or demographic variables such as age, gender, race, income, occupation, price and supply (Ritson & Hutchins, 1995). The other stream of research bases its models of food behaviour on psychological constructs such as beliefs, attitudes, interest/motivation, social norms, knowledge and other internal psychological variables (Shepherd & Raats, 1996, Shepherd & Sparks, 1994). This last tradition excludes the external or demographical variables (e.g. age or income) for both parsimonial and theoretical reasons (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980).

Therefore, the objective of this study is to integrate these perspectives by analysing the relationship between consumer's chronological age as a demographic exogenous predictor variable, and frequent consumption of seafood as a dependent or outcome variable, and how this relationship is mediated by three psychological variables: Attitudes/preferences toward eating seafood, involvement in healthy eating and perceived time used to prepare meals (convenience). These three predictor variables are selected for their ability to explain age and food choice, which are further discussed in the second part of this study (Furst, et al., 1996, Rozin, 1995, Steptoe et al., 1995).

This study attempted to improve recent efforts to integrate the economic and attitudinal tradition in studying age and food choice (e.g., Myrland et al., 2000), by using structural equation analysis (LISREL 8 by Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1993). First, we discuss and measure reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of the attitudinal constructs, which is unusual within the econometric tradition of food choice. Second, structural equation methods also allow us to simultaneously test the pathways of direct and indirect relationships between the variables and their relative ability to explain seafood consumption behaviour. A representative survey sample of Norwegian households forms the empirical basis for this study.

Section snippets

Understanding the structure of the determinants of seafood consumption

Some recent studies in the econometric tradition have tried to integrate theories and constructs from consumer psychology into studying seafood choice and consumption (Kinnucan et al., 1993, Myrland et al., 2000, Nauman et al., 1995). Despite this integration, one problem is that psychological or latent constructs such as attitudes or preferences in many of these studies are based on the operational definition philosophy, assuming that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between a

Sample and procedure

The data used in this study is a separate part of a large field survey of Norwegians consumers’ attitudes towards seafood (Olsen, 2001). A questionnaire asking respondents about their attitudes and seafood consumption behaviour was constructed and pre-tested. The questionnaire, cover letter, and prepaid return envelope were sent to 2500 randomly selected families in Norway. These families were pre-recruited by phone to identify their status, the name of the target person, and to give

Confirmatory factor analysis and validation of measures

Confirmatory factor analysis of the three internal or latent constructs was performed to establish the scales to be used in the structural model estimation. Initial confirmatory factor results with 10 items produced poor empirical results (e.g., RMSEA=0.11). Items with large residuals and cross-loadings to other constructs were removed from the analysis. This process resulted in one item of the attitude construct (“It is wise to have seafood for dinner “) and one item of health involvement (“I

Discussion and conclusions

In our present study of seafood consumption behaviour, we have integrated the econometric tradition of food choice (e.g., Myrland et al., 2000) with the social psychological tradition of cognitive or attitudinal motives underlying the selection of food (Roininen et al., 1999). One important finding in this study is the evidence that the relationship between an external variable (age) and behaviour (seafood consumption) is mediated by attitudinal and motivational variables, as proposed by Ajzen

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article was carried out as a part of a project entitled “Seafood consumption: Explaining preferences, satisfaction and behavioral frequency,” funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The author thanks Dr. Ulf Olsson, the editor Dr. Hal MacFie, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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