Social Norms Influencing the Local Food Environment as Perceived by Residents and Food Traders: The Heart Healthy Hoods Project

Abstract

Exploring subjective elements of the food environment remains key to understand why and how residents purchase food. Our aim was to explore and describe the social norms relating to the local food environment and food purchasing behaviors, as perceived by residents and food traders in Madrid, Spain. This qualitative study took place in a middle socioeconomic status neighborhood of Madrid between January 2015 and May 2016. We conducted 35 semi-structured interviews. We used stratified purposive sampling to recruit residents, neighborhood workers (N = 20) and food traders (N = 15) representing different levels of involvement with food purchasing behaviors. We analyzed these data using an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Participants highlighted social aspects of the food environment in relation to food purchasing behaviors. First, interpersonal and relational food environment elements were emphasized, including trust and tradition. Participants also identified generational demographic trends in relation to changes in the way residents purchased food: the new pace of life and the lack of time to buy fresh food and to cook at home. All these elements were influenced by the economic crisis. Food environment interventions aiming to improve food purchasing behaviors and residents’ diets should consider intermediate social aspects of the food environment like trust and tradition and the fast pace of life of younger generations.

Environmental Influences on Food Behaviour

“…Much insight can be gained into the context in which everyday food decisions are made by adopting alternative methodologies, as illustrated in three of the studies in this special issue. For instance, Sandín Vázquez and colleagues [9] adopted a qualitative approach and interviewed residents, neighborhood workers, and food traders to better capture social aspects related to food purchasing behaviors in a neighborhood of Madrid. Main key drivers of purchasing decisions emerging from the study were the importance of tradition and the trust and social relationships between customers and the food traders, the time scarcity associated with modern life, which drove younger residents towards supermarkets with greater ranges and convenience of food and longer opening hours, as well as the reduced purchasing power of individuals, which had a direct impact on purchasing decisions.…”

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Sustainable Agro-Food Consumption from Consumers’ Perspectives: Cases from Taiwan and France

“…Sustainable agro-food consumption is related to diverse macro-and individual-level factors. For instance, macro factors such as the availability of green foods [3,[12][13][14], the affordability of certain food options [5,9,10,[15][16][17], the health and safety concerns of organic agro-foods [4,7,10,[18][19][20][21], transportation and distributions systems [22][23][24][25], and the ecological concerns of the food supply [7,12,26,27] were inspected from previous studies. In recent years, more individual factors were examined, for example, consumers' awareness on SAF purchasing [12,[28][29][30], perceived values of green food [31], and the shifting social norms over years of promulgation on SAF consumption [10,17,19,20,32].…”

“…In particular, social norms, referring to beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of a group of people, play an essential role in sustainable purchasing behavior from end users' view [20]. Exploring social norms of SAF consumption remains key to understanding consumers' perspectives and purchase intention [10,19]. Studies on the effectiveness of social norms have shown that social message exposure may influence consuming choices in food intakes [20].…”

“…Correspondingly, interpersonal related factors such as trust and tradition also addressed their efficacy in influencing food consuming behavior [7,9,23,25,29,[34][35][36][37][38]. In addition to the affective influence on attitudes and judgements surrounding SAF consumption, social norms also highlight consumers' preferences as powerful interventions to govern consumers' decision making between individual behaviors and social factors [10,14]. Though contemporary research in the effectiveness of social norms and organic food consumption is sparse but growing, people's overall beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors, by all means to explain and also to influence their sustainable agro-food consumption choices [19].…”

“…In addition, the dynamics of different cultures, as well as individual competences across borders as regards sustainability, result in the need for further, sufficient studies to be undertaken on this topic. Due to improvements in quality of life and a shift in values from a traditional diet to a healthy diet in Asia, the consumption of organic food in Asia is on the rise, reflecting consumers' increasing preference for organic products [5,7,10]. Therefore, France and Taiwan were chosen for this cross-cultural comparison, to further compare consumer views from organic sectors of different maturity.…”