Volume 9 Issue 2
Can Health and Environmental Concerns Meet in Food Choices?
Alessia Cavaliere, Elena Claire Ricci, Matteo Solesin and Alessandro Banterle
1Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, Italy
2Accenture S.p.A., Via Maurizio Quadrio 17, 20154 Milan, Italy
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The objective of the study is to analyze if there is a relationship between health and environmental sustainability concerns in food choices. We used data of 300 Italian consumers collected through a vis-à-vis survey. We performed cross-tabulations and chi-square tests for a selected set of variables measuring both types of concerns, segmenting the sample by age, gender and education. Our results suggest that the association between health and environmental concerns is often statistically significant, though we observe a high variable specificity of the associations. Socio-demographic conditions seem to play a role in determining the association between the two concerns, with middle-aged and/or highly-educated respondents showing a stronger association between health and environmental concerns.
Keywords:health concerns; environmental sustainability; food economics; consumer choices