**1. Introduction**

In recent years, there has been a progressive increase in consumer awareness as consumers have become more informed and more demanding with regard to the quality of agri-food products. This has led to the emergence of a growing market for products with a strong territorial identification [1]. The data of the XVIII Ismea-Qualivita Report [2] show that the demand for local or traditional foods is increasing, as they are often perceived to be of higher quality [3], more sustainable, [4] and bearers of a strong cultural identity [5].

Over the years, the emphasis on the territorial origins of agri-food products has become a consolidated marketing model, posing as an alternative to mass production [6–8]. References to territory, whether on packaging or in advertising, have become an increasingly popular way for marketers to differentiate products, by attributing specific characteristics to them, derived from specific cultural identities and traditions. Indeed, as stated by Bryła [7], "It is possible to copy all aspects of a food product, but it is impossible to change its history". Thus, the geographical origin of the product becomes an added value that enables small and medium-sized enterprises to compete with large international companies [9].

References to territoriality can be considered as a driver for the purchase of food products [10–12]. The added value of references to territorial origins has led the European

**Citation:** Russo, V.; Zito, M.; Bilucaglia, M.; Circi, R.; Bellati, M.; Marin, L.E.M.; Catania, E.; Licitra, G. Dairy Products with Certification Marks: The Role of Territoriality and Safety Perception on Intention to Buy. *Foods* **2021**, *10*, 2352. https:// doi.org/10.3390/foods10102352

Academic Editor: Maria Lisa Clodoveo

Received: 24 August 2021 Accepted: 30 September 2021 Published: 2 October 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Union to adopt a package of legislation (EC Regulations 2081/92 and 2082/92) which provides protection of food names according to their origins: the Protected Designations of Origin (PDO), the Protected Geographical Indications (PGI), and the Traditional Specialities Guaranteed (TSG) [13]. On the consumers' side, these labels represent a guarantee of quality, since references to territoriality are evocative of concepts that encourage the choice of these products. First, regional products are linked to the concept of tradition, understood as the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next [14]. Guerrero and colleagues [15] defined a traditional food product as "a product frequently consumed or associated with specific celebrations and/or seasons, normally transmitted from one generation to another, made accurately in a specific way according to the gastronomic heritage, with little or no processing/manipulation, distinguished and known because of its sensory properties, and associated with a certain local area, region, or country". The limited production area and the specificity of the territory contribute to endow the product with special characteristics in the eyes of consumers [9]. Another concept associated with local or traditional foods is that of authenticity [16,17], considered as one of the main drivers in consumers' attitudes towards brands and products [18,19]. Moreover, another key aspect determining the appeal of local products is their sustainability, that is, the use of production processes that are able to respect the environment and to provide forms of support and jobs for local communities [20,21]. Finally, another function of controlled indications of origin is to reduce the information asymmetry between producers and consumers, so that the latter can always be aware of fundamental aspects regarding the origin and the production of food [22]. For the reasons listed above, brands with certification marks are perceived by the consumer as natural, authentic, safe, and controlled. Van Dijk and colleagues [23] confirmed in their research the fundamental importance of the certification marks as a symbol of protection connected to the territory.

The role of packaging is essential to communicate the product visually and its connection with the territory. Indeed, packaging is the first visual element that puts consumers in contact with the product, a pre-requisite for information processing [23]. It is, therefore, important to investigate the importance of packaging in communicating aspects such as tradition and territoriality [10]. Indeed, packaging could play an important role in the challenge to communicate the abstract concept of "traditional" to new targets, such as young generations.

Until now, research has mostly focused on the perceptual characteristics that packaging must have to convey quality and safety. Specifically, the study by Simmonds et al. [24] suggested that transparent packaging "increased willingness to purchase, expected freshness, and expected quality, as compared to packaging that used food imagery instead. In addition, people expected the products to be tastier, to be more innovative, and were more liked overall in several of the product categories that were assessed." Chandran et al. [25] found that transparent packaging increased the product trust. However, as specified by Simmonds et al. [24], to have a positive effect on purchase intentions, the product contained in transparent packaging must be visually attractive in order to avoid the opposite effect.

Few empirical studies have instead focused on the role that references to territoriality on packaging have on the willingness to buy and on the psychological mechanisms underlying this choice [10]. Since it is recognized that consumers are willing to pay more for better quality and healthier products [26–29], in this study we investigate the role played by references to territoriality on packaging of dairy products with a certification mark by hypothesizing that:

**Hypothesis 1a (H1a).** Reference to territoriality on packaging has a direct and positive association with intention to buy.

Among the drivers for people to buy territorial products is the sense of safety associated with food, namely the access to healthy food with no risks to human health and no contaminants [30]. According to Espejel and colleagues [31], consumers infer from PDO

labels a safety badge, due to the strict controls to which products under the protection are submitted by the regulatory councils. So, we hypothesize:

**Hypothesis 1b (H1b).** A positive and direct association of packaging with reference to territoriality with food safety perception.

Moreover, according to Grunert [32], the perception of safety plays a mediating role between the demand and supply of agri-food products. Therefore, according to [33] (but see also [23,31]), we hypothesize:

**Hypothesis 2 (H2).** A positive and direct association of food safety perception with intention to buy and that:

**Hypothesis 3 (H3).** Perceived product safety has a mediating role between the sense of territoriality evoked by packaging and the intention to buy.

For our research question we have chosen to focus on the specific category of products from the dairy sector. We chose to focus on dairy products for two reasons. First, dairy products are characterized by a higher contribution to climate change with respect to vegetable foodstuff production, and the relationship between perceived sustainability of dairy products and willingness to pay has already been investigated in the literature [11]. Second, in the European Union, 231 cheeses have a designation of origin [34]. In particular, it is the southern European countries (e.g., Italy, France, Spain) that have the largest number of products that are candidates for registration as PDO or PGI, and these countries are comparable to each other in their familiarity with controlled origin products [14,35]. This makes dairy products suitable for conducting a multi-group survey involving subjects from different European countries, with the aim of testing a first pilot general model or identifying any differences worth further investigation. Herein, we carried out a multigroup study, basing our survey on a sample of Italian subjects and one of French subjects.

The following, Figure 1, shows the theoretical model and the expected relationships through the hypotheses.

**Figure 1.** The hypothesized theoretical model.

### **2. Materials and Methods**

### *2.1. Participants and Procedure*

The study involved cheese consumers from Italy (IT; N = 400) and from France (FR; N = 200). These two countries were selected on account of the production of dairy products with certification marks. Participants completed a questionnaire placed on an online platform (Google Moduli) to which researchers added a note with instructions to fill in the questionnaire and a note to ensure anonymity. The questionnaire was administered between May and June 2020. Before the questionnaire, participants were asked to answer to some screening questions related to the consumption of cheese (that is, if they bought and ate cheese), the frequency of consumption and purchase, and whether they had food

allergies, in particular, cheese allergies. Participants not satisfying the criteria of real consumption of cheese (buying, eating, and the possibility of consuming cheese without allergies) were not considered in the study. Moreover, all participants provided their informed consent in a specific box before filling in the questionnaire.

The IT sample included 60% females and 40% males, with an average age of 45 years (SD = 10.64). Among them, 11% lived alone, 72.8% were married, and 16.3% lived with their family of origin, and they had an average number of children of 0.780 (SD = 0.932). Their overall cheese consumption (coded as: 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often) was 3.655 (SD = 0.563).

The FR sample included 60% females and 40% males, with an average age of 46 years (SD = 12.39). Among them, 19% lived alone, 78% were married, and 4% lived with their family of origin, and they had an average number of children of 0.915 (SD = 1.069). Their overall cheese consumption was 3.710 (SD = 0.536).

The IT and FR samples did not significantly differ in mean age, as shown by the twosample t-test ( χ2 (598) = 0.918, *p* = 0.359), nor in number of children (W = 42,020.5, *p* = 0.274) or average cheese consumption (W = 4197.0, *p* = 0.211), as shown by the Mann–Whitney U tests.

As this study used convenience samples, we compared the demographic data of the two samples. According to ISTAT data, in Italy the updated distribution of females and males in the considered range of age is, respectively, 50.4% and 49.6%, whereas in France it is 51.6% and 48.4%. Even if these data are more gender distributed than the samples of the study (they are more equally distributed than the data of the study, which have a slightly higher percentage of females), they reflect a convergence between the two compared populations, making them comparable (that is, balanced distribution of female and male with slight predominance of females). This balance was also reflected in the samples of the present study, respecting the proportion of the general population and balancing, therefore, the contribution of type/gender in the study as well.
