AUTHOR=Blanke Julia , Billieux Joël , Vögele Claus 

TITLE=Healthy and Sustainable Food Shopping: A Survey of Intentions and Motivations

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Nutrition

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.742614

DOI=10.3389/fnut.2022.742614

ISSN=2296-861X

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Objectives</title><p>To determine the relationship between sustainable and healthy food shopping behavior comparing general motivation with the immediate intention to act.</p></sec><sec><title>Method</title><p>We conducted an online survey of 144 staff at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland, using a questionnaire based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Self-Determination Theory to compute the Behavioral Intention score and the Relative Autonomy Index in relation to healthy and sustainable grocery shopping.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>The intention to shop healthy food was higher (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.56) than the intention to shop in a sustainable way. A significant intention-action gap was observed for both healthy (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.97) and sustainable grocery shopping (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.78). While there was a significant correlation (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001) between the longer-term motivations to act in a healthy and sustainable way, this association was not significant (<italic>p</italic> = 0.16) for the more short-term Behavioral Intention scores.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion and Implications</title><p>Health was identified as a more important driver for dietary behavior compared to sustainability. While longer-term motivation shows a stronger correlation between healthy and sustainable grocery shopping, short-term intentions do not follow this pattern as strongly. A significant intention-action gap exists for both, which is stronger for sustainability than for health.</p></sec>