0000000001091257
AUTHOR
L Cembalo
Social Embeddedness in Farmers Decision Making
Reciprocal interactions among farmers and consumers can be seen as the central point of market exchanges in Civic Agriculture (CAs). This work exploits the concept of social embeddedness as a conceptual tool for describing some phenomena related to CA. Social embeddedness concept might help to understand how consumers and producers behave in the market beyond the paradigm of neoclassical economics theory. The objective of this study is to empirically evaluate which attitudes may influence farmers decision to participate to several types of CAs. Our results confirm the strong role of social embeddedness phenomenon in those forms of CAs characterized by personal relations between farmers and …
The Beauty of the Commons? Consumers Participation in Food Community Networks
Why are consumers increasingly joining farmers to co-produce and transact sustainable foods world-wide? May these networks be a new tool to promote sustainable practices? As stated by Sandler (2010): “Longitudinal collective action environmental problems are likely to be effectively addressed only by an enormous number of individuals each making a nearly insignificant contribution to resolving them”. Consumers-farmers networks may serve this scope by inducing individual actors to change their preferences towards sustainable products. However participation in these networks is still not well understood. On one hand new institutional economics explains consumers joining farmers in creating a n…
Local economies and consumer participation: the organic food fairs
New consumption habits stand out against the idea of a rational consumer, which is aimed at maximizing utility according to budget constraint. Presently, people have the tendency to behave differently according to various purchase opportunities; a significant role is played by both ethical sides and selfless motivations. These new trends fall within the context of a new social paradigm that foresees postmodern society’s rise. Consumers have the tendency to use the market as an arena in which political, ethical and environmental issues may arise, starting a new trend of an alternative consumption called “political consumerism”. In this paper we’ll try to understand how new consumption habits…