Organic foods are those produced without the use of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or other inputs. They are invariably marketed as being ‘good for the environment’.
Yet according to researcher and self-described environmentalist Hannah Ritchie, they are actually worse for the environment than foods produced through conventional farming. Although organic farming uses less energy, it requires much more land and has greater potential for eutrophication and acidification of water bodies. And since agriculture uses a lot of land but not much energy, Ritchie argues that the disadvantages of organic farming outweigh its advantage in terms of energy use.
Why, then, do so many consumers who fancy themselves ‘environmentally conscious’ opt for organic foods? One possibility is they’re simply not aware of the research Ritchie cites. But could there be another, less flattering reason?
In a recent paper, Faruk Konuk and Tobias Otterbring examined whether consumers who prefer organic foods score higher on the ‘dark triad’ traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. They also examined whether such consumers might be motivated by virtue signalling, status consumption and praise from others – in addition to well-intentioned concern over the environment.
The researchers sent questionnaires to 400 consumers in Istanbul, Turkey, and obtained a high response rate of 84% (i.e., 337) usable surveys. Respondents were asked whether they were likely to buy organic food and whether they were willing to pay extra for it. They were also asked questions designed to measure the ‘dark triad’ traits, as well as questions designed to gauge their motivations for buying particular products.
Narcissism was measured with items such as ‘I tend to want others to pay attention to me’, Machiavellianism with items such as ‘I have used deceit or lied to get my way’ and psychopathy with items such as ‘I tend to lack remorse.’ As for consumers’ potential motivations, virtue signalling was measured with items such as ‘I often buy products that communicate the fact that I have certain characteristics’, status consumption with items such as ‘I would buy a product just because it has status’ and praise from others with items such as ‘It is important for me to get praise and admiration’.
What did Konuk and Otterbring find? In short, all three ‘dark triad’ traits and all three measures of ‘unflattering’ motivations were positively associated with the intention to purchase organic food and the willingness to pay extra for it. The correlations were surprisingly strong (on the order of r = .60). And they remained statistically significant when the researchers bunged all the variables into one great big multivariate model.
So consumers with high levels of ‘dark triad’ traits were more likely to have ‘unflattering’ motivations, and those with ‘unflattering’ motivations were, in turn, more inclined to purchase organic foods. Incidentally, this isn’t the first study to show that individuals with environmentalist inclinations have high levels of ‘dark triad’ traits. Which suggests the finding is a general one.
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