Towards Understanding the Motivators of Sustainable Consumer Behavior-Validation of the Food Eco-Guilt Scale.

Background/objectives: The growing concern about the environmental impacts of consumption has led to the emergence of so-called "eco-guilt"-a psychological construct reflecting the guilt felt by individuals about the environmental consequences of their choices, which plays a prominent role among the factors influencing pro-environmental behavior. Although eco-guilt has already emerged in other service sectors, such as tourism, and general scales exist to measure it, no such scale exists in the context of food consumption. The aim of this research is to develop and validate a scale to measure eco-guilt related to food consumption.

Methods: To create the scale in an objective way, we used the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework. Data were collected from university students; a questionnaire was completed online by 367 respondents. The responses were analyzed from several different perspectives, using multiple methods following the principle of triangulation. For the data analysis, the Psych and Mokken packages of R software (version 4.4.0) were used.

Results: The constructed scale was based on 13 items. An overview of the reliability of the scale was provided using various indicators (e.g., Cronbach's α = 0.86, ω_h = 0.63, ω_{H asymptotic} = 0.71, and ω_t = 0.89). Based on the analyses, we proposed a reduced form with nine items for the measurement of food-related eco-guilt.

Conclusions: The results of this research provide a scale to help understand what motivates consumers to make more sustainable consumption choices. Moreover, the scale is relevant to future research focused on understanding how guilt influences future food choices.