ABSTRACT
In this research, we debate the critical challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic such as food scarcity, by examining the influence of consumption values on consumers' willingness to consume genetically modified (GM) food in the presence of consumer food attitudes, animosity, and ethnocentrism, which could be the one possible option to deal with the food scarcity problem. The proposed relationship could help to understand the complex societal problem of food scarcity and import dependency in the food sector before and after the crisis. Therefore, based on the theory of consumption values, we investigated government actions, consumer attitudes, and their willingness to consume GM food through 1340 valid USA responses and 1065 Chinese responses. We observed that COVID-19 doubled the number of malnourished people in 2020 relative to 2019, while consumption values, to some extent, changed consumer food attitudes and were inclined toward other food alternatives such as GM food regardless of governmental support for GM food in both USA and China. Moreover, this research enables governments, policymakers, market practitioners, and other stakeholders to use the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to negotiate with other countries to share their food technology along with imports.
ABSTRACT
This article discusses the compelling challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic by examining how much a given conventional food sector is reliable and secure in providing healthy food. For this purpose, we relied on the push-pull-mooring (PPM) model to examine the consumer switching intentions from conventional food to organic food. To investigate this model, we utilised the quantitative method approach and collected 1000 valid responses from Chinese consumers for a better understanding of the consumer purchase and switching intention. Based on our findings, the COVID-19 pandemic strongly pushes Chinese consumer’s intentions towards organic food, even though the organic food sector is relatively new in China, which started in the 1990s and no such legitimate evidence found that the food processing or packaging caused COVID-19 transmission. This research assists the decision makers and managers to understand and analyse the true consumer switching intention that drastically changes because of pandemics and consumers are self-protecting from any harm. This article also helps policymakers see the basic problems like a high price, availability issues, and less credence attribute knowledge getting away to the consumer from organic food and ensuring the availability, affordable price, and awareness regarding credence attribute through reanalysing and implementation of policies.