0000000001216920
AUTHOR
L. Cembalo
“Rationally Local”: Consumer Participation in Alternative Food Chains
Why are consumers increasingly participating in alternative food chains to co-produce and distribute foods with farmers? In this paper, values and food-related lifestyles, as well as transaction costs and socio-demographics, are used to analyze consumer participation in alternative food chains in Italy. Using a simultaneous system of equations, a model with instrumental variables is implemented to measure the relationships between values and food-related lifestyles, and between the latter and participation in an alternative food chain. Our results show that Italian participants in alternative food chains have the profile of rational shoppers who typically look at price and taste criteria. A…
Organic consumption and consumer participation in food community networks
Due to improvements in welfare, new food consumption concerns have emerged in Europe. Such concerns go beyond issues related to food safety and market prices. Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GASs) are one way to combine utilitarian and ethical aspects: in these groups the trade in organic products predominates. The aim of GAS groups is to primarily develop a local economy which is both ethical and fair, providing networks of economic solidarity through social relations and economic-territorial districts. This paper sets out to determine the profiles of the consumer groups that constitute GASs in Sicily (southern Italy) in order to search for key elements of the movement in terms of both commu…
Identifying Social Entrepreneurial Behaviour in Farmers participation in Alternative Food Network
The concept of social entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and attracting increased attention from research institutions and business schools around the world to understand how these satisfy the needs of communities, those private and public institutions are not adequately addressing. Social entrepreneurship, identified as activity with a social objective, was used in this study as a conceptual tool to empirically examine farmer’s participation in AFNs. Using a behavioural approach, we conducted a survey in Sicily, Italy, using a questionnaire with modified items from the Edinburgh Study of Decision Making on Farms. From the results emerges that around 64% of the farmers participating in AFN…