Food, Citizens, and Market. The quest for responsible consuming

Appetite, 2016

Global environmental challenges require changes in both the production and the consumption of goods. In this paper we analyse how consumers perceive the high environmental burden of meat. We analysed consumer environmental consciousness, including problem awareness and a support to action dimensions, latter including perceived self-efficacy as well as solutions to problems. The solutions were positioned on a continuum from increasing the efficiency of production to discussing sufficiency levels in consumption practices (techno-optimism, local meat, organic meat and meat reduction, respectively). We used a statistically representative survey sample (n = 1890) from the population of Finland and cluster analysis to explore differences among consumers. The analysis revealed that most Finns seem to be rather unsure of the study topic. At the same time they tend to have a comparably high level of self-efficacy (55 per cent of respondents) and endorsement of particularly local meat solution type (55%), followed by organic meat (35%), meat reduction (25%) and techno-optimism (15%), though the neutral stand was the most common one across the data. We also identified six consumer groups that reveal not only a high number of Highly unsure consumers (40%), but also some Rather conscious (20%) and a relatively small number of Highly conscious (8%). In addition, there were also easily observable groups of Careless conscious (14%), Rather unsure (9%) and Resistant (8%). The results highlight the need for a multitude of political actions to guide meat consumption, as there are groups that may benefit from practical tools for making dietary changes as well as groups in need for more comprehensive selection of measures, including environmental information.

Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society, 2019

Agriculture and Human Values, 2009

With 'consumer demand' credited with driving major changes in the food industry related to food quality, safety, environmental, and social concerns, the contemporary politics of food has become characterized by a variety of attempts to redefine food consumption as an expression of citizenship that speaks of collective rights and responsibilities. Neoliberal political orthodoxy constructs such citizenship in terms of the ability of individuals to monitor and regulate their own behavior as entrepreneurs and as consumers. By contrast, many proponents of alternative food networks promote the idea that food citizenship is expressed through participation in social arrangements based on solidarity and coordinated action rather than on contractual and commoditized relationships between so-called 'producers' and 'consumers'. This paper thus focuses its analysis on the strategies used to mobilize people as consumers of particular products and the ways, in turn, in which people use their consumption choices as expressions of social agency or citizenship. In particular, the paper examines how the marketing, pricing and distribution of foods interact with food standards to enable and constrain specific expressions of food citizenship. It is argued that narrow and stereotypical constructions of the 'ethical consumer' help to limit the access of particular people and environmental values, such as biodiversity, to the ethical marketplace.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022

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Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations

The progressive and unprecedented growth of the Earth’s population and the shrinking of the planet’s natural resources make it necessary to look at contemporary consumption from the point of sustainable development goals. The purpose of the paper is to characterise consumers’ attitude towards the idea of sustainable food consumption, which manifests itself in declared undertaking of sustainable behaviours both on the market and in households. The research employed the exploratory survey technique (direct survey) on a sample of 900 consumers from Poland and Slovakia. The most common declared sustainable behaviours include: avoiding overconsumption, monitoring healthy eating, as well as sorting and recycling of waste. On the other hand, the customers of both countries should be more strongly encouraged to reduce the consumption of water, electricity and natural gas when preparing meals. Less than half of all respondents declared such behaviour.

This article makes the central argument that basic democratic values such as justice, autonomy and participation run the risk of being neglected when designing 'nudges' (i.e., indirect suggestions to influence individual behaviour) for sustainable behaviour change in the context of food governance, potentially complicating a democratisation of the food system. 'Nudges' uphold freedom of choice while simultaneously advocating a non-coercive soft force of paternalism to help people realise their preferences, maximise societal well-being and meet macro-sustainability goals. While the promises of the 'nudge' approach are widely echoed, nudging is also being contested because of its possible anti-democratic effects, such as individualisation, depoliticization and the emphasis of the status of citizens as 'consumer-citizens.' From a food democracy perspective, these dangers may undermine efforts to organise collective political action and impede alternative visions of a future food system. Empirically, the article examines specifically how behavioural-economic approaches imagine transitions to a more sustainable food system. By using the "COOP Supermarket of the Future" as a case study, the following analysis will illustrate how private actors are increasingly involved in steering consumer choice towards socially desirable actions. The analysis suggests that the design of choice environments may under specific circumstances increase the susceptibility of individuals to the influence of corporate preferences and simultaneously decrease the prospects for democratic legitimation and decision-making. The article therefore critically assesses whether reforming the food system by altering consumers' choice-sets and the attribution of personal responsibility, may in fact point towards implicit antidemocratic tenets underlying the 'will to nudge' citizens.

E3S Web of Conferences, 2023

The breakthrough of organic food plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change. This is based on several research findings stating that organic food can reduce the use of chemicals, improve soil conditions, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and support biodiversity. However, the high price constraint of organic food leads most people to prefer non-organic food daily. The focus of this research is to determine the level of consumer willingness to pay more (WTPM) for organic food by examining the role of knowledge of organic food (OFK), price consciousness (PC), and consumer attitudes (CA). The 300 respondents were collected from all islands in Indonesia, including Java, Bali, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, Bangka Belitung, and Papua. This study uses Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test the research hypothesis. The research results indicate that OFK and PC directly and significantly influence CA. Furthermore, PC and CA also directly and significantly affect WTPM. Interestingly, OFK does not directly drive consumer WTPM. On the other hand, CA plays a significant mediating role between OFK and PC regarding WTPM. The implications of this research finding are that to increase the adoption of organic food as a climate change mitigation measure; efforts are needed to enhance consumers' knowledge and awareness of the benefits of organic food to form a more positive attitude towards the product. This, in turn, can improve their willingness to pay a slightly higher price to support organic food consumption in Indonesia.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2021

It is well-established that policy aiming to change individual consumption patterns for environmental or other ethical reasons faces a tradeoff between effectiveness and public acceptance. The more ambitious a policy intervention is, the higher the likelihood of reactionary backlash; the higher the intervention's public acceptance, the less bite it is likely to have. This paper proposes a package of interventions aiming for a substantial reduction of animal product consumption while circumventing the diagnosed trade-off. It couples stringent industry regulation, which lowers output and raises prices, with a targeted universal income at a level which would allow typical households to maintain their animal product consumption even at the postregulation price level. The change of opportunity costs of animal products, however, would induce a shift of consumption away from animal products while enhancing-rather than diminishing-consumer freedom and welfare. The policy package, which is further designed to cohere with traditional value orderings rather than relying exclusively on progressive concerns, is politically ambitious, but psychologically pragmatic. It constitutes an attempt to socialize the endeavor of bringing consumption patterns in line with ethical demands by empowering, rather than sanctioning, individuals, and relevant groups.

2017

The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1 This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013). But earlier animal foodrelated crisesfrom the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle in the 1980s, to the widespread contamination of powdered milk with melamine in China that came to light in 2008had already made it abundantly plain that, in the context of industrialising and globalising food supply systems, the animals we eat do not simply sustain our bodies or satisfy our culinary tastes but, in doing so, come profoundly to reshape social, economic and ecological relations and cultural understandings of edibility, taste and health. Connections between humans and animals-as-food are not simply one-way relationships between consumer and consumed, but involve a more complex set of relations concerned, among other things, with ecological change, world markets and local economic conditions, health and food safety, labour relations, and changing cultural values. For example, growing meat consumption has been described as part of a wider, increasingly globalised 'nutrition transition' away from diets rich in fibres and complex carbohydrates, a transition associated with emergent health concerns including rises in obesity, type II diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular illnesses and certain cancers (Popkin

Journal of epidemiology …, 2011