Social Representations of Organic Food in Romania

The aim of the current research was to investigate the Romanians’ social representations of organic foods and the connections between their self‑identification to the cultural referents related to organic foods and, respectively, their actual organic food consumption. The first study was conducted on a sample of 74 participants, who filled in an associative map task (Abric, 1994). Results have shown that the nucleus of the representation comprised the following elements: price, health, authenticity and availability, while the peripheral zone was formed by evocations such as expensive, money, income, whims, supermarket, additives, benefits etc. The second study was conducted on a sample of 80 participants who filled in a Self Identification Conceptual Network (de Rosa & Holman, 2011; de Rosa, 2012) and a questionnaire measuring their actual food consumption. The findings revealed that people who self‑identify positively with health, openness to new, diet, health consciousness, food consciousness, informed choice, organic foods, trust and quality and negatively with convenience, price, suspicion, tradition, quantity consumed larger amounts of organic foods as compared to those who did not. Results are discussed in light of their contribution to the national and international literature on organic foods and social representations