Food for thought: an assessment tool for environmental food identities

ABSTRACT

Multifunctional Farms offer services and products in a way that consumers’ identity can be investigated and then altered. Current policy is missing a practical tool to investigate consumer’s identities in Multifunctional Farms, which is crucial to develop targeted policies. In this research, an innovative assessment tool is proposed and able to reveal consumers’ identities of consumers about the environment and food preferences in Multifunctional Farms. Then, this tool was tested in a case study, in adult consumers of a Multifunctional Farm. Consumer’s preferences about the environment and food revealed main indicators and segments of these identities. This tool can be useful for policymakers, farm managers, practitioners or marketing researchers to investigate consumers’ preferences in the field of sustainable food. The tool creates a common ground in the research of environmental and food identities and helps to a better understanding and implementation of practices towards a more sustainable consumer profile.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychographics
• environmental identities
• food identities
• assessment tool
• indicators
• food marketing
• consumers preferences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to Greek legislation (Greek Parliament, 2014), a Greek Multifunctional Farm is defined as an agricultural business which consists of 1) arable land, 2) plant or animal capital, 3) area of food services or education or demonstration or attendance of production process or homemade processing area and is operating towards local practices.