The Impact of Message Framing on Organic Food Purchase Likelihood

A consumer survey and Tobit analysis were used to determine the effect of message framing and other factors on self-reported organic food purchase likelihood. Negative framing, which emphasizes the possible negative consequences of conventional agricultural techniques, led to a “boomerang effect ” that resulted in lowered purchase likelihood of organic food by consumers with high trust in food safety. Consumers with significantly higher purchase likelihood had high perceived risk from pesticides and high prior knowledge about organic methods. African-Americans and those with less than a high school education had lower purchase likelihood. The market for organic food has been growing five times faster than food sales in general over the past decade (Dimitri and Greene 2002). The decision to purchase organic food is often a function of the desire to avoid certain conventional technologies such as pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, and biotechnology (Williams and Hammit 2001; Du-Puis 2000). A complication is that, given current scientific knowledge, the potential ill effects o