Sustainable Food Consumption : Exploring Consumers' Perspectives

The aim of this study was to explore consumers’ descriptions of sustainable food consumption. The concept of sustainability can be difficult to grasp, but is often defined in terms of three pillars; environment, society and economy. Prior research of sustainable food consumption have often focused on one of the pillars rather than all of them together in relation to consumers understandings of sustainable food consumption. Notwithstanding, previous research have mentioned that in order to fully comprehend sustainability it is essential to take all of the three pillars into consideration. Therefore, this study acknowledged this gap, as it focused on the three pillars of sustainability as a base, and further connected the three pillars to the four food concepts; organic, Fairtrade, sustainable diets and waste, in order to fully understand consumers descriptions of sustainable food consumption. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach, and the data was collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of students and employees at Linnaeus University in Sweden. The interviewees gave varied and interesting answers, which later were analyzed in comparison to the theory on the subject. With the answers from the interviews it was concluded that environmental and social sustainability were prioritized to economic sustainability among participants. As the participants’ descriptions of sustainable food consumption was varied, and all of the four concepts in relation to three pillars were analyzed, a framework was developed in order to clarify how the consumers describe sustainable food consumption. The study also presents a number of implications for further research as well as managerial implications. Keywords Sustainable food consumption, consumers description, three pillars of sustainability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, social sustainability, organic, Fairtrade, sustainable diets, vegetarian, locally produced, waste reduction, food wast