The impact of interest and ecological knowledge on environmental attitudes and behaviors of Portuguese consumers

Green consumers play a critical role in sustaining environmentally development into the future, helping to preserve the health of the planet and society. Therefore, this research aimed to assess Portuguese consumers' orientation towards environmental issues and how these issues influence their food purchasing decisions. For this, a cross-sectional and quantitative study was carried out based on an online questionnaire applied to a sample of 696 Portuguese consumers aged between 18 and 74 years old. Subsequently, data was analyzed using the IBM SPSS software version 28. Data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics to characterize the sample, the Cronbach’s Alpha to analyze the internal consistency of the answers and the Spearman’s test to study the correlation between variables. Finally, a multivariate analysis was conducted in order to estimate three multivariate regression models. Most respondents (57.6%) lived in the North of Portugal, namely, Porto (26.1%), Bragança (18.4%) and Braga (13.1%) districts; had completed secondary education or equivalent (51.3%); have a household income between 705 and 2115 euros (62.2%); and lived in households with 3 (27.7%) or 4 people (29.6%). The Cronbach’s Alpha values were satisfactory for all dimensions, indicating good consistency of the answers. All correlations found were statistically significant at the 1% significance level and positive. The results suggest that interest in ecological knowledge, knowledge of ecological issues and age are important factors that influence ecological purchasing habits, conscious purchasing planning and sustainable behavior. These results are useful to guide public policies that promote sustainability through more effective strategies.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020 and UIDP/00690/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020).