Psychosocial drivers influencing local food purchasing: beyond availability, the importance of trust in farmers

Introduction: Although consumers bought more local food during the changing context of pandemic COVID -19, this positive modification may not become a stable habit afterward. Methods: To understand this change in drivers of consumers' intention to buy local food, we investigated the role of perceptions of various intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of local food, its perceived quality, price and availability, and consumers' trust in local food producers. We also investigated the role of sociodemographic variables as well as the moderating role of consumers' stage of change (i.e., absence, reduction, maintenance, and increase) in the purchase of local food. Results: Structural equation modeling results on a representative sample of Italian consumers (N = 511) showed that local food availability is the main driver of purchase intention (β = 0.20; p = 0.001), especially among consumers who have changed their habits toward buying local food (reduction stage = β = 0.24; increase stage = 0.30; p = 0.001). In addition, trust in local food producers was found to be a key antecedent to consumers' perceptions of local food as environmentally friendly (β = 0.57; p = 0.001), healthy (β = 0.55; p = 0.001), authentic (β = 0.58; p = 0.001), tasty (β = 0.52; p = 0.001), socially sustainable (β = 0.59; p = 0.001), and as a product with a good appearance (β = 0.55; p = 0.001). Discussion: Overall, these results improve our understanding of which food attributes should be emphasized in communication to promote the purchase of local food.