Negotiating multiple sustainability dimensions: How does it affect consumers in their grocery shopping?

Hjortlund, Klara Vanggård ; Theilgaard, Nanna Filskov

4. Term

Urban, Energy and Environmental Planning, Master

2023

2023-06-02

22 pages

As current global food systems are increasingly contributing to land degradation, desertification, and loss of biodiversity, there is an increasing political interest in providing consumers with labelling schemes to choose sustainable food products. With consumers having an increased interest in the impacts of food products and sustainable diets, multi-dimensional sustainability food labels are slowly emerging on the market. The research on these labels is however limited, and the effects it has in guiding consumers is not well understood. In this study, we examine how the multi-dimensional sustainability food label Planet score guides and influences consumers in their negotiation process, and how this compares to the current single-dimensional sustainability food labels, in a Danish context of mostly young adults. We examine this on the basis of a conceptual framework building on elements both from practice theory and the COM-B model, and through the qualitative method of workshops, where participants divided into groups according to if they do/not value sustainability when grocery shopping. The findings show that Planet score can act as a tool for consumers to assess the overall impacts of food products, and compare between food categories, where most find it easing their negotiation process when comparing products. Furthermore, the confronting feature of the overall score raises the consumers’ awareness of the impacts of their food purchases, which was not found to be the case for the current single-dimensional sustainability food labels. However, the influences identified from the findings, indicate that the Planet score is able to make incremental changes to consumers’ negotiation process. The findings indicate that to foster radical change the Planet score label can act as an implement, amongst a multitude of other instruments, to simultaneously change food culture, to allow more radical dietary changes to be accepted. The findings from this study adds to the limited body of knowledge of how multi-dimensional sustainability food labels influences and guides consumers.

Fødevaremærker ; forbrugerrejse ; Multi-dimensionel ; forhandlingsprocess ; Praksis teori ; Adfærdsændring

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