Clean food consumerism: scale development and validation

Abstract

Clean foods are perceived as natural, pure, simple, and nutrient-dense foods that support overall health and well-being, prioritizing nutritional quality, transparency in sourcing, and ethical farming practices. Clean food consumerism is an emerging and growing international phenomenon, albeit one that is often loosely defined and under-researched. To enable consistency and encourage research in the area, a scale to measure clean food consumerism (CFC) is proposed. The structured scale-development procedure involved four stages and four quantitative and qualitative studies: scale design, item generation and evaluation, item purification, initial validation, and final validation. The final version of the CFC scale contains 18 items in a 5-factor structure: health benefits (6 items), ease of use (3 items), product familiarity (3 items), product authenticity (3 items), and transparency of the manufacturing process (3 items). Two additional factors—consumer lifestyle and eating habits—were identified as having a direct impact on clean food consumption. All tests confirm that the proposed CFC scale is suitable for measuring clean food consumerism. The development and introduction of this scale advances the understanding and conceptualization of this phenomenon and hopefully stimulates further research.