The second level concerns Vinson’s domainspecific values, which are beliefs relevant to
economic, social, religious and other activities
through which personal values influence
attitudes. Other authors refer to beliefs at this
level as value orientations (Fultonet al., 1996)
or food-related lifestyles (Brunsøet al., 2004).
These beliefs are more numerous than basic
values, but they still possess an ‘ought to’
quality (i.e. ‘products I consume should be
produced in an environmentally friendly way’),
being more specific than personal values, but
more abstract than attitudes. We define ethical
food choice motives to be at this level of the
value construct. Ethical food choice motives
were originally introduced by Steptoeet al.
(1995) in their food choice questionnaire
(FCQ). Lindeman and Va ¨a¨na¨nen (2000) criticised the scale, suggesting that ethical motives
were underrepresented in the FCQ, and
provided a new scale for ethical food choice
motives. The scale consists of three dimensions: ecological motives, political motives and
religious motives. The ecological motives
reflect a strong animal rights perspective in
addition to general environmental concern.
The political values reflect the importance of
the political acceptability of country of origin
and human rights concern. Religious motives
reflect the acceptability of a food in one’s
religion. Earlier research has shown that
environmental concern, including ecological
aspects, is an important motive for buying
organic food (Schlegelmilch et al., 1996;
Squireset al., 2001). Similarly, political values
and religious motives are expected to influence attitudes towards organic food.