Practice What You Preach

Practice what you preach!?
- A study of the gap between attitude and behaviour towards organic milk.

Lev som du lär!?
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En studie av gapet mellan attityd och beteende mot ekologisk mjölk

Kandidatuppsats VT 2009 Linköpings universitet
Nationalekonomi och Företagsekonomi
Författare: Karin Lindgren, Elin Olsson
Handledare: Inger Asp, Jan Lindvall

Abstract
The trend of environmentally friendly consumption permeates our whole society and the
general attitude towards the consumption of it is strongly positive. However, the existence of
an attitude-behaviour gap became clear to us since the actual green consumption does not
reflect the positive attitude. In this thesis focus is on one specific product - organic milk.
Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explain the dissonance between attitude and
behaviour towards organic milk. In order to reach our purpose we chose to perform a pilot
study targeting students at the University of Linköping. Both qualitative and quantitative
methods have been used in the collection of data. It has been done using a survey and
interviews. We were able to establish the existence of an attitude-behaviour gap towards
organic milk amongst students at the university, and that this gap in fact arises before an
intention to buy organic milk is even formed. Since a behavioural intention is not formed, an
actual corresponding behaviour will not occur. The attitude-behaviour gap is explained by the
fact that other factors than attitude influence the formation of the intention. In this case the
factors strongly counteracting the attitude are consumer habits, social influence, to what
extent the consumer feels an ethical obligation to buy organically and whether the consumer
identifies herself with the issue. Together, these factors are so strong that they succeed in
neutralizing the positive attitude.

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Sammanfattning
Dagens moderna samhälle genomsyras av en stark trend att konsumera miljövänligt och...