Fostering behaviour change to encourage low-carbon food consumption through community gardens

ABSTRACT

Reducing the food-related carbon footprint is an important part of climate change mitigation. Given a growing global population and rapid urbanization, shifting contemporary carbon-intensive food consumption trends is essential. As such, encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change and pro-environmental food consumption behaviour in particular is as an important challenge; reducing our collective foodprint is an important way of reducing our collective carbon footprint. Yet, despite widespread consumer awareness of climate change, consumption behaviours are rarely consistent with environmentally friendly aspirations. This empirical research emphasizes the contribution and the potential of community gardens as a means of fostering pro-environmental behaviour change towards low-carbon food consumption. It evaluates the role of London’s community gardens in promoting participants’ environmentally friendly food consumption patterns, thereby lowering London’s foodprint on the consumer side. To collect data, ninety-five community gardens in London were asked to circulate an online survey to their gardeners. In total, forty-eight community gardeners responded to the survey. These responses were complemented with semi-structured interviews held with community garden participants. The paper investigates London community gardeners’ food consumption patterns including food self-sufficiency, food shopping habits, dietary choices, and food waste management in terms of their carbon footprint. In addition, it verifies that the timespan of community garden participation is not an absolute indicator of low-carbon food consumption choices, despite its influence on certain changes. It also accounts for experiential and social learning as the two key aspects of community gardening that promote gardeners’ behavioural change, resulting in a lower foodprint in daily life.

KEYWORDS:

• Community gardens
• pro-environmental behaviour change
• food consumption patterns
• food-related carbon footprint

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the valuable advice and feedback I received from Dr. The, Tse-Hui and Dr. Son, Jung Won on an initial version of this paper. My gratitude also goes to all the participants who took part in the research survey, and the community garden organizations for kindly circulating the questionnaire to their group members and volunteers, especially ‘Transition Town Wandsworth’, ‘Mobile Gardeners’ Park’, and ‘Edible Garden’. Furthermore, I wish to thank to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments, which helped me improve the manuscript. All mistakes are the author’s own.

Disclosure statement

The author declares that (s)he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.