Speaker
Description
Keywords: Sustainable food consumption, food supply chain, environmental perceptions, farm to fork strategy, European Green Deal
Introduction
In the run to become a leading carbon neural economy by 2050, the European Union acknowledges the role of sustainable food consumption (SFC) to achieve the goals proposed by the farm to fork strategy (F2F). Despite the political urge to achieve carbon neutrality in food operations, current food consumption still follows unsustainable patterns (Notarnicola et al., 2017), being related to increasing GHG emissions, water pollution and biodiversity loss. Making food consumption more sustainable by influencing consumers’ behavior is a valid way to mitigate climate change, and to promote sustainable growth and food security (Myers et al., 2013).
Consumers’ behavior might potentially reduce GHG emissions trends, by influencing household purchasing patterns and everyday consumption choices (Ivanova et al., 2020). When consumers choose what food to buy, they indirectly determine what food is produced and how. These facts reshape market forces by making companies rethink their environmental and social responsibility (De Carvalho et al., 2016). Nevertheless, SFC’s concept remains diffuse and it is unclear how consumers perceive sustainability and how to guide their food choices in a more environmentally-friendly direction (de Boer & Aiking, 2021). Thus, understanding food sustainability perceptions should provide meaningful guidance for policy interventions directed to achieve SFC.
In the one hand, food habits are very hard to change because they are influenced by socio-cultural preferences and marketing conditions, as well as by the environment where people live (Carrus et al., 2018). On the other hand, even if consumers perceive food sustainability as an important matter, their purchase attitudes may be inconsistent and not reflect on it (Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006). Against this backdrop, this paper aims at investigating the extent to which consumers’ socioeconomic characteristics and environmental perceptions could contribute to sustainable behavior when consuming food products in Europe. The findings will permit to draw strategies directed to support the transformation of food systems and pave the way towards decarbonization in Europe.
Methods
The dataset is obtained from the 93.2 Eurobarometer survey (GESIS, 2020), conducted in 2020, and from Moreira-Dantas et al. (2022). The survey was conducted in the 27 EU member states, where 27,237 civilians were asked about perceptions and attitudes to endorse overarching food sustainability aspects in the EU. From Moreira-Dantas et al. (2022) we use a range of cross-country systematically-collected consumer initiatives aiming at achieving sustainability in the FSC.
Consumers are categorized as a binary traffic-light variable according to their priorities when buying food: red consumers prioritize convenience, cost, and shelf-life availability; and green consumers think firstly about food origin, climate impacts, and food processing.
The methodology employ consists on estimating a probit model to assess socioeconomic and pro-environmental covariates factor responsiveness across the traffic-light consumer choices. Socioeconomic characteristics are interacted with pro-environmental ones to indicate what factors are more likely to influence consumers to become part of the green group. Consumers in this group show a more sustainable behavior when consuming food products.
Findings
Environmental perceptions vary according to the nature of the question addressed. While organic production seems to be similarly well-perceived by consumers of different social classes and education level, other aspects such as food labels, agricultural subsidies for sustainable practices, or trade standards show different perceptions by subgroups.
Individuals with higher levels of education, with high-skilled occupation, and those of higher age show a higher propensity to fall into the green-consumers category, thus considering the potential environmental impacts when buying food, and willing to spend more for food produced with sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices.
The presence of active cross-country consumer initiatives show a positive correlation to the probability of falling into the green category. A fact that supports the importance of collective consumers’ efforts from NGOs, and civil associations to promote sustainable food consumption.
Conclusions
This paper shows that the relative importance of socioeconomic and environmental explanatory factors differs by type of consumers and the economic status of respondents influences consumers’ priorities when buying food. Moreover, consumers initiatives aimed at spur food awareness seems to be a valid way to support the political priorities towards sustainable consumption in Europe.
