Improving local rice consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa through social marketing: evidence from Ghana

The efforts and strategies of governments and other stakeholders to achieve self-rice sufficiency on the African continent have failed to achieve the intended results. Although scholars have primarily attributed this problem to poor attitudes and behaviour toward the consumption of locally produced rice, limited attention has been paid to behavioural change approaches. Thus, from the perspective of the theory of planned behaviour, the study sought to understand the factors that influence consumers’ intention to consume locally produced rice and to suggest solutions from a social marketing perspective to elicit voluntary changes in behaviour toward the consumption of local rice. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 375 to 40 participants, respectively. Qualitative data were analysed thematically, while quantitative data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results showed a strong positive and significant relationship between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and intention to consume locally produced rice. The results showed a weak significant negative relationship between intention and actual consumption of local rice, suggesting a high intention-behaviour gap. However, the qualitative results identified six critical factors that prevented people from consuming local rice though having the intention. These factors include cooking difficulty, suitability for few local dishes, lack of taste and aroma, foreign materials, poor packaging and standard specification, and unavailability. Thus, interventions addressing these barriers will significantly increase the consumption of local rice in Ghana. The study contributes to literature by using the mixed method approach and the theory of planned behaviour to predict factors that could improve local rice consumption in a developing country context. We also addressed how the 4Ps of social marketing could be used to address the identified barriers.