The last two decades have witnessed growing environmental awareness along with health and food safety concerns which have led people to question modern agricultural practices. This could be seen in the increasing demand for organic produce, which is considered as less harmful to the environment and healthier than their conventional counterparts (Schifferstein, 1998; and Williams, 2001). Organic foods claim to help serve several benefits including healthiness and sustainable production. But they largely lack customer support and thus less market demand due to the lack of knowledge, trust and information about such food products. The present study is an attempt to find out consumer behavior towards organic food and the role of health consciousness as the moderating variable. The idea is to address the research gap in the extant literature wherein studies have primarily focused on factors influencing the growth of organic foods such as product acceptance, information, higher income, willingness to pay premium price and ethical consumption.

Interest in organically-produced food is increasing across the world in response to concerns about conventional agricultural practices, food safety and human health concerns, animal welfare considerations and concern about the environment (Chryssohoidis, 2000a and 2000b). Thus, examining consumer behavior towards organic foods is one of the inspiring areas of marketing research which involves the psychological processes that consumers go through in identifying the needs, search for information, evaluating the products and making the final purchase.

Marketing Management,Consumer Behavior, Organic Food, Moderating Effects, Health Consciousness.