Abstract

Artificial intelligence is reshaping food and health services through personalized meal planning, intelligent dietary recommendations, and virtual nutrition assistants. Yet adoption is not determined by technical utility alone. It is embedded in a broader configuration of health awareness, digital trust, cultural and religious fit, and regulatory confidence in data protection.
This study introduces the Smart Food AI Adoption Model (SFAIM), a context-sensitive framework for explaining the adoption of AI-based food technologies in Saudi Arabia. SFAIM integrates perceived usefulness, health awareness, digital trust, cultural fit, and policy compliance. The model draws on TPB, HBM, TAM, and UTAUT2, while reorganizing their relationships around the specific nature of dietary and health-related technology adoption in conservative societies.
Using a two-stage quantitative design consisting of a pilot study (N = 56) and a main study (N = 124), the results show that SFAIM explains 54.3% of the variance in behavioral intention, outperforming TAM (39.8%) and UTAUT2 (47.6%) within the study sample. The findings support health awareness as a mediating mechanism and digital trust and cultural fit as statistically significant, though modest, moderators.
The study contributes by reframing AI-food adoption as a culturally filtered health decision rather than a purely utility-driven technology choice. It also offers practical guidance for designing AI-enabled dietary applications that are culturally aligned, privacy-sensitive, and policy-compliant.

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