Natural labels are increasingly present in the market and appreciated by consumers, despite formal regulation still missing. Knowing the psychosocial factors that may predict natural food choice may be useful to understand what drives consumers to choose this category of food. We analyzed the antecedents of consumers’ intention to purchase natural food, testing a theoretical model that integrates the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory, and consumers’ trust in natural food. A sample of Italian participants (N = 1018) filled an online questionnaire assessing intention to buy natural food, TPB and VBN variables, and trust in the natural food supply chain. The model applied yielded results which confirmed the predictiveness of the tested integrated model. Attitude and perceived behavioral control were the strongest antecedents of intention, followed by trust and personal norm. Consumers’ intention to buy natural food was also associated with their evaluation of the consequences and possibilities related to the purchase behavior, as well as with their moral evaluation attributable to pro-environmental determinants.

The paper presents some results from a stated-preference study that compares three samples of urban consumers of extra-virgin olive oil from three representative Italian cities: Naples (South), Rome (Centre) and Milan (North). A series of multinomial logit models are estimated from choice experiments responses and tested for unobserved heterogeneity for EU labelling informing on PDO/PGI, organic and place of origin attributes. The consequences of such form of heterogeneity are flashed out with respect to issues of market segmentation on the basis of the pattern of correlation across preferences as estimated from mixed logit models. Results indicate that product origin matters differently in different cities, while the sample from Naples is the least heterogeneous the Milan and Rome samples display highest taste heterogeneity, but also stronger intensity of taste.