The role of attitude, preference conflict, norms, and family identity in explaining intention/behavior toward fish consumption in Vietnamese families

Abstract

The main objective of the thesis is to explore and test the roles of attitude, preference conflict, norms and family identity in explaining intention/behavior toward fish consumption in Vietnamese families. This study utilizes a theoretical framework based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, but more focused on some other variables (ambivalence, family conflict and identity) in an extended model. The study reveals that attitude, family conflict, and family identity influence intention, while family norms factor do not exhibit a direct relationship with the intention to consume fish in Vietnam. In addition, ambivalence was negatively correlated with attitude, while interpersonal conflict was unrelated to attitude. Moreover, although social variables seem to be of vital importance in predicting attitude, only family identity and attitude enjoy positive correlation with high statistical significance. Family norms have a low impact on attitude while family conflict has no significance in predicting attitude towards fish. Also, family norm and family conflicts were mutually related. Further, the result does not support the hypothesis that family identity represents a moderator in the family norm-intention relationship. Finally, intention to eat fish is highly positively correlated to behavior to consume. However, there is no direct relationship between family identity and fish consumption behavior. The results of this study will shed some light on discovering the role of attitude, preference conflict, family norms, and family identity in explaining intention/behavior toward fish consumption in Vietnamese families. It will allow academics to better understand the complication of social variables and further develop future research in this area.

Keywords: Fish consumption; attitude; preference conflict; ambivalence; family norms; family identity.