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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 8 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1442074
Sustainable fresh strawberry consumption: Environmental, Genetically Modified food and climate concerns in Europe and North Africa
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
- 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture, Territory, Environment and Mathematics, University of Brescia, Brescia, Lombardy, Italy
Background and gap in the literature: Seasonal strawberries are a tasty fruit with plenty of significant health and environmental benefits. Despite these attributes, the determinants influencing strawberry consumption remain underexplored. Few, existing research are focused on conventional factors such as taste, freshness, and price, leaving aside some important, current dimensions such as consumers' environmental attitude, sustainability, Genetically Modified (GM) food knowledge, and climate change concerns. This article aims to explore the impact of the above-mentioned factors on the purchasing behavior of strawberries among consumers. Methodology: A designed questionnaire for a final sample of 2,378 consumers from Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, and Morocco was used to collect data about socio-demographic attributes, strawberry purchasing habits, respondents' level of knowledge on the topic of genetically modified food (GM) and climate change issue. The generalized ordinal logistic approach was performed deriving from the ordinal qualitative type of our two variables of interest (seasonal and non-seasonal strawberries purchase) and relaxing the assumption of parallel lines. Main results: From the socio-demographic factors, the more educated individuals, living in urban areas and having higher income levels are more likely to purchase frequently seasonal strawberries, while older people buy less frequently non-seasonal strawberries. Individuals who are more aware of sustainability issues, exhibit sustainable behaviors, and have more climate change concerns are more likely to buy less frequently nonseasonal strawberries, consisting of the most important result of our analysis. Implications: These results offer a comprehensive understanding of other drivers than the conventional ones related to seasonal and non-seasonal strawberry purchase patterns, giving important insights for policymakers in formulating tailored interventions for other dimensions: promoting sustainable agricultural practices (following the seasonality of the fruit), increasing consumer awareness about the environmental implications of the non-seasonal fruit purchases, and shifting individual eating patterns towards more sustainable and healthy ones (fresh and seasonal fruit consumption).
Keywords: seasonal strawberries, sustainability, Environmental attitude, GM food, generalized ordinal logit model
Received: 01 Jun 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Zeneli, Ventura and Frisio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Fjona Zeneli, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of Milan, Milan, 20122, Lombardy, Italy
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