The Social Representation of Sustainable Food Consumption in Veszprem County, Hungary

László, Veronika

Keywords: sustainability, free association, food consumption, local economic development, Q56, R11

Our food system is not sustainable and getting more and more vulnerable due to emerging risks, rapid changes, and unforeseen events (such as climate change, new diseases, biodiversity loss, overpopulation, inequality). In the developed regions, we lose a significant part of our food due to wasteful consumer behaviour, therefore our attention is directed towards the consumers in this research.
The sustainability of our food system is complex, therefore the social representation theory has been utilized in this research. In this research, we examine the residents of Veszprem County of Hungary (n=213) with the free association game technique. The method allows us to access a higher level of understanding of the consumers as it enables the reach of implicit content as well.
The social representation of sustainable food consumption has an emotional charge, typically positive associations were evoked, what we can see as the index of polarity was higher than 0.5 and the index of neutrality was below -0.5. The most frequently evoked associations were health (f=75), bio (f=62), and local producers (f=47). Often associations were in connection with local economic development, with higher polarity than the average, suggesting that for the residents of Veszprem County the preference of local products is a part of being a sustainable food consumer. The result suggests the growing importance of health in sustainability and the negative perception of preservatives and additives. The research results also imply that more and more consumers realize the harmful effects of the overconsumption of animal-based products.

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