BASIQ 2022 International Conference on New Trends in Sustainable Business and Consumption The Theory of Planned Behavior to Explain the Purchase of Sustainable Food Products Mihaela Cornelia Sandu 1 , Irina Virginia Drăgulănescu 2 and Gabriela Tigu 3 1)2) University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania. 3) Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania. E-mail: mihaela.sandu@faa.unibuc.ro; E-mail: irina.dragulanescu@faa.unibuc.ro E-mail: gabriela.tigu@ase.ro Please cite this paper as: Sandu, M.C., Dragulanescu, I.V. and Tigu, G.,2022. The Theory of Planned Behavior to Explain the Purchase of Sustainable Food Products. In: R. Pamfilie, V. Dinu, C. Vasiliu, D. Pleșea, L. Tăchiciu eds. 2022. 8 th BASIQ International Conference on New Trends in Sustainable Business and Consumption. Graz, Austria, 25-27 May 2022. Bucharest: ASE, pp.193-200. DOI: 10.24818/BASIQ/2022/08/024 Abstract In recent years, the need for people to change their eating habits towards more sustainable models is increasingly pressing. Food preferences, choices and eating habits are often difficult to change, as they are directly related to the personal context of the individual, that is to their lifestyles and socio-cultural environment. Although many people already have positive attitudes towards sustainable nutrition, on the other hand the purchase and actual consumption of more sustainable food products is conditioned by several factors such as: economic, socio-cultural and local traditions. The current study explores the main determinants of sustainable food consumption in Romania. For this, we use the theory of planned behavior (TPB) that predict and explain human behavior in specific context. The questionnaire was applied online on a sample of 365 people. To analyse the data, we’ve developed a structural equation model in order to determine the relation between intention and current behaviour to buy sustainable food with them possible determinants. From our study that was developed mostly on students we obtained that there is a direct influence of intention to buy sustainable food by people’s attitude, subjective norms, perception of availability, perceived effectiveness and perceived value. Moreover, from the study we obtained that perceived effectiveness, perceived value and intention to buy have a direct influence on consumer’s current behavior. Keywords Sustainable food consumption, theory of planned behavior, Romanian food context, nutritional behavioral changes. DOI: 10.24818/BASIQ/2022/08/024 Introduction In recent years, various studies have been developed that adopt the Theory of planned behavior - TPB (Ajzen, 1991) as a model, focusing mainly on consumer behavior. According to Ajzen (1991), the TPB provides a theoretical framework that allows to systematically investigate the factors that influence behavioral choices. It has been used in various studies to analyze behaviors such as leisure choice, driving violations, shoplifting, dishonest actions, Fast-Food Consumption (Bîlbîie, et al., 2021), etc. In the paper we analyzed the intention of people to consume sustainable food products. This intention certainly depends on the psychology of the individual and therefore on the choice of using a behavioral model and therefore the factors and variables that influence their behavior must be analyzed. Nutrition is a key factor in quality of life, as it is an important determinant of an individual's well-being in a given environment. The growing availability of consumer alternatives has supported irrational consumerism in terms of economic criteria for the usefulness and functionality of products. Consumer motivations represent only one aspect of their behavior and in order to understand them, the social context of individual as well as the internal or external need of individual must be taken into account. Therefore, it 193