Antecedents of obesity among Indian youth: from consumer psychological and lifestyle perspective.

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to determine the antecedents of obesity among the younger generation of Indians (Generation Y) from a psychological and lifestyle consumer perspective. The study also investigates the moderating role of demography on the body mass index (BMI) of Indian youths. Design/methodology/approach. The study initially develops a conceptual model, stemming from an extensive theoretical research, and subsequently validates this using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique with a sample size of 1,242 Indian youths. Findings. The study concludes that consumers' food habits (FH) and physical activity (PA) positively impact consumers' physical health (PH), which influences their BMI levels (BLs). Anxiety (AX), depression (DE), stress (ST), peer pressure (PP) and work pressure (WP) impact individuals' mental health (MH), which also influences their BLs. Finally, there is a significant moderating impact of demographic factors, such as age (AG), gender (GE) and income levels (ILs) on the relationship between...