Introduction: The first step in paying attention and moving towards the development of organic production is to identify the behavior of consumers, because the main factor in the growth of any economic system is the management knowledge based on the knowledge about consumer behavior, the factors affecting it, and the ability to predict the future behavior. Healthy food plays a very important role in maintaining and improving the quality of the environment; that is why the necessary measures to encourage consumers to consume healthy foods have become more important. Many policies implemented globally to promote and improve healthy diets at the community level have been evaluated. Most of these food policies that aim to enhance consumption behavior use methods such as social media campaigns, educational approaches, food labeling and approaches that directly or indirectly target a person's attitude towards the consumption of organic and healthy products. How to examine consumer behavior has a significant impact on the attitude and analysis of industrial product designers' plans. The results of many studies indicate that consumers are not sufficiently aware of the importance and benefits of using organic products or the importance of the price of these products for consumers who have different views and perceptions regarding the characteristics of organic and healthy products, which affects their awareness and views. For this reason, this difference in views between the sample consumers should be compared and then, the effect of awareness and consumer's view of price orientation or health orientation on their willingness to consume in the future should be investigated. Another distinguishing feature of this study is the use of the matching model, which will be discussed in detail later.
Materials and Methods: In this study, in order to separate the effects of knowledge and attitude of a person towards organic products on the future consumption of these products, the genetic algorithm approach was used. The main variables of the concerned model would be the people's willingness to consume at different prices and their maximum willingness to pay for organic salmon. The main variables included the person's health awareness and attitude, and the auxiliary variables were the person's education and gender. In order to more accurately examine the effect of income on the consumption of the two groups of people under investigation, the studied sample was divided into three income levels of below 100 million IRI rials, 100 to 200 million IRI rials, and more than 200 million IRI rials, and the act of matching in each of these income levels were also done. The concerned data was collected by completing the questionnaire of fish consumers in Tehran city, which according to the information of Statistical Center of Iran (ISC), is the largest fish consumer in Iran, in 2023, and using Cochran's formula, the number of survey samples was calculated as 398 and the questionnaires were completed in the same amount. Finally, all calculations of this study were conducted using R4.0.2 software and the Matching package of this software.
Results and Discussion: The lower increase in fish consumption among Iranian households compared to the global average of fish consumption can have various reasons, such as the high price of this product and the fear of the health of farmed fish such as salmon. Therefore, paying attention to the production of healthy products can attract consumers to buy these products, such as healthy salmon. One of the important and fundamental factors in encouraging consumers to consume healthy salmon is increasing the level of information and knowledge of consumers and community members about the importance of consumption and the characteristics of healthy products. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the role of knowledge and awareness of the importance of consumption and characteristics of healthy fish in future consumption and the willingness of people to pay for this product considering the lack of a market for this product in Iran and Tehran as well. The results of the balance of covariates showed that after equalization, the difference in the average of the two treatment and control groups for the variables of gender, education and health orientation indexes was reduced; therefore, the results of the balance of covariates showed that the difference between the two groups was reduced to confirm the purpose of matching.
Conclusion and Suggestions: Based on the obtained results, the willingness to consume healthy salmon in the whole sample among people with knowledge in different price scenarios including ‘without price change’, ‘a 30 percent increase in price’ and ‘a 60 percent increase in the price’ of healthy salmon compared to normal salmon was 55.36, 31.86 and 28.96 percent, respectively, which would be more than people without knowledge of healthy products. This means that these people with knowledge are willing to allocate a larger share of their monthly fish consumption to healthy fish according to different price scenarios. Also, the willingness to pay among the people with knowledge of healthy and organic products in the whole sample would be about 10 percent more than those people without such a knowledge. In addition, the results showed that in the first income level, despite the positive coefficient, the knowledge had no significant effect on the people's willingness to pay, but at higher income levels, this variable had a significantly positive effect on the people's willingness to pay. Considering the important and fundamental matter of knowing and understanding the importance and characteristics of healthy and organic products such as healthy salmon on the willingness to consume healthy salmon in different price scenarios and the willingness to pay for it, the policy makers and executive and communication bodies such as the Ministry of Agriculture-Jahad (MAJ), Fisheries Organization, Organic Association of Iran and National Broadcasting Organization of Iran are recommended to try to create and spread the culture of using and consuming healthy and organic products such as healthy salmon with detailed and regular planning. Making cultural programs on TV, radio and other means of communication such as different social networks can be effective in developing the culture of using healthy salmon. Expanding the use of these products, along with increasing the food security of Iranian households and the health of society, can also lead to an increase in the income of producers.