Consumer’s attitude and consumption of fish in Dhaka city: influence of perceived risk, trust and knowledge

Abstract

Fish is the main source of animal protein in Bangladesh. However, no previous studies I am aware of has analyzed or explored consumption and attitude toward fish in Bangladesh. In accordance with several studies in the area of food consumption behavior, this study use the Theory of Planed Behavior (TPB - Ajzen, 1991) a conceptual framework to explore the consumers attitude and consumption of fish in Dhaka city. Attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control in the traditional theory is extended with perceived risk, trust and knowledge in order to explain intention and consumption of fish. The measures used to evaluate the constructs in the theories are adopted from previous studies.

The study employs the methods of descriptive analysis, test of reliability and means difference, factor analysis, and multiple regression analysis to analyze the data collected in Dhaka city.

The results show that fish as a meal is a common and broadly used food, and the people have high motivation and positive attitude toward consumption of fish. Perceived quality is revealed as the main determinant of consumers’ attitude, while availability is the main determinant of perceived behavioral control. Bones and smells of fish are not considered as unpleasant and not found as a significant indicator of attitudes. Time consumed to cook and prepare fish also did not found as a significant indicator of perceived control.

It is also found people knew that fish are cultured in toxic environment and preserved with hazardous chemical, however the risk perception is less significant. This study found that people have much trust on food information from specialist like doctors and university scientist; but have low trust on Government and political parties.

In the area of theory testing this study found attitude and norms are good predictors of intention, while intention and attitude have good predictability on consumption behavior. PBC did not find having effect on both intention and behavior. The cumulative variance explained by the data set is 73% for the constructs of TPB. In case of the extended model it is observed that intention, attitude, trust on information sources and product knowledge have significant effect on behavior, while attitude, norms and procedural knowledge is revealed as good predictor of intention. In the extended model it is also observed that there is no statistically significant relationship between risk, worry, trust on information sources, trust on sales outs with intention and behavior. However, while regressing intention with perceived risk (risk and worry) and trust (trust on information sources and on sales outlets) this study found statistically significant relationship.

Key words: TPB, perceived risk, trust, knowledge, fish consumption, attitude, and intention