Motivations to consume ecological foods in alternative food networks (AFNs) in Southern Spain

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the motivations to consume ecological foods in alternative food networks (AFNs). Design/methodology/approach In total, 150 questionnaires were applied; the questionnaire was adapted from Food Choice Questionnaire (Steptoe et al., 1995). Data were analyzed by means of multivariate statistics with factor and cluster analysis. In order to identify statistical differences (p<0.05), Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney nonparametric tests were performed. Findings Ten factors or motivations were found: social ecological concern, nutritional content, sensory aspects, certifications, naturalness, specialized consumption, trust in the seller, economic aspects, health and availability. Four groups were obtained and called: citizen consumers, in-process citizen consumers, conscious social consumers with no interest in certifications and conscious pragmatic consumers. It is concluded that differentiated consumers visit these establishments and their motivations are diverse, albeit they concur, to a varying extent, with the objectives of AFNs, finding a mixture of hedonic and ethical motivations. Practical implications This sort of works about specific places of consumption as well as specific consumers, in this case ecological, contributes to the development of future social research on other contexts, different consumers and products. Originality/value This sort of research has been carried out in various European cities, with a number of foods and over various sales channels; however, at present there is a debate around AFNs and the veracity of their goals. This way, the present work can contribute with an answer to whether the goals match the motivations of consumers.

Understanding consumer attitudes towards ecolabeled food products: A latent class analysis regarding their purchasing motivations

“…Findings shown in Table 4 are in agreement with the literature, where the typical profile of the consumer of ecolabeled food products is women, with a high educational level and middle‐aged (Y. S. Chen, 2010; Escobar‐López et al 2017, 2019; Lee & Yun, 2015; Mohamad et al, 2014; Wu et al, 2014).…”

“…The number of these factors (variables) used for the classification of consumers in this study (8) is in line with that of other studies that used between 5 and 9 factors (Escobar-López et al, 2017;Lee & Yun, 2015;Mohamad et al, 2014;Stolz et al, 2011). However, this number of variables is lower than that applied by other authors (Escobar-López et al, 2019;Zander & Hamm, 2010).…”

Alternative Food Networks: Perceptions in Short Food Supply Chains in Spain

“…This coincides with what other authors have established about these spaces being feminized [13]. Several works have reported that women have more pro-environment attitudes and take a more active part in this type of initiatives, being described as "female citizen consumers" [13,45,78]. For example, Danish women (in their consumption of differentiated foods) showed a higher affinity with the Civic, Domestic and Market worlds [79].…”

“…Although the potential importance of individual consumers and communities is noteworthy [44], the consideration of the rest of actors involved in food chains (in order to correctly understand their signifiers and practices) becomes of relevance. However, the main gap of those studies is that production, consumption and retail channels [16,29,40,[45][46][47][48] and organizers [25] have been analyzed separately. Therefore, to obtain a global vision of AFNs, behaviors, motivations and perceptions of all involved actors should be taken into account [4].…”

“…In the current work, the educational level was high for the three type of actors, although lower for the Producers (over 50% only have secondary education with no university education). Different studies have demonstrated that consumers with a high educational level attend this type of initiatives [45,80]. Some works have established a link between the higher educational level and the possibility of choosing alternative foods due to the information available [8,81].…”