Factors affecting fast food consumption among Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) students.

Fast food industry is growing at a rapid pace. People opt for fast food as it is convenience and easy. However, over consumption of fast food can lead to health problems including obesity. Obesity rate is also rocketing high leaving worries on government and health ministry. Hence, this paper will study on the factors affecting fast food consumption among UMK students. There are many factors contributing to the fast food consumption.

This thesis tries to validate the extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model on the data derived from the students of University Malaysia Kelantan. Malaysian consumers are exposed to variety of fast food in the market and the presence of health problems due to the consumption of fast food has become a subject of interest. However, there are some fast food restaurants serve healthy version of fast food. Therefore, there is essential to conduct a survey regarding the behaviour of the students as the intention level is one of main criteria which determine the students whether they want to consume fast food. Based on TPB, the intention to accomplish a behaviour seems to be based on the personal attitudes and perceived social norms. Hence, the attitudes are then influenced by the beliefs on a behaviour’s outcome. In the context of consuming fast food, the consumer intention will be influenced on how their attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control.

A simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 200 students in UMK. In this study, three methods of analysis which are descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, and correlation analysis is utilized in order to accomplish the purposes of the study. The findings indicate that the intention levels of the students toward fast food consumption are based on the attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control. In general, most of the students consume fast food due to social pressure.