Climate-friendly Food-choice Intentions Among Emerging Adults: Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior with Objective Ambivalence, Climate-change Worry and Optimism

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2023 Jul 6

PMID 37408959

Authors

Kirsti M Jylha

Maria Ojala

Sandy Odisho

Anja Riise

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Climate-friendly food choices are still relatively rarely addressed in studies investigating climate engagement, particularly among young people. To address this research gap, we conducted a questionnaire study with senior high school students ( = 474). Our overarching theoretical framework is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which we extended with emotional factors (climate-change worry and optimism) and attitudinal ambivalence. We found that all factors included, except for optimism, correlated with the food-choice intentions. In multiple regression analyses, worry was the second strongest predictor, after attitudes. Moreover, a measure of objective ambivalence moderated the correlation between attitudes and intentions by weakening it. The results support the validity of using the TPB model when explaining intentions to make climate-friendly food choices among emerging adults. However, our results suggest that it is also important to consider emotions-in this case climate-change worry-and the existence of conflicting evaluations about choosing climate-friendly food.

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