THE DETERMINANTS OF HOUSEHOLDS’ FOOD CONSUMPTION IN GREECE

Several studies have been devoted on analyzing consumers’ characteristics on demand for specific kinds of food; however less attention has been paid to the parameters of the level of food expenditures and the willingness to change this level. The aim of this survey is to illustrate the focal determinants of household expenditures on food in Greece. The procedure of the statistical and econometric analysis estimates the profile of consumers who are aware of their expenditures on food, employing a cross-sectional data set from Athens and Crete. In particular, we carried out an extensive survey of 800 questionnaires, from October 2011 to February 2012, using the stratified random sampling method. We distributed 400 questionnaires in Athens and 400 questionnaires in Crete. The results showed that independent variables of demographic and socioeconomic traits such as income, gender, age, marital status, place of residence and status of employment have an important impact on household expenditures on food. In addition, further empirical analysis supports the first law of Engel in our data. Strong associations were found between demographic, socioeconomic parameters and consumer attitude in food expenditures experimentation