A fenntartható élelmiszer-fogyasztás szociális reprezentációja Veszprém megyében

Our food system is unsustainable in its current state and is becoming increasingly vulnerable to accelerating and unpredictable changes, including climate change, emerging diseases, biodiversity loss, overpopulation and increasing inequalities between people. In developed regions, a significant part of our food is lost due to wasteful consumer behavior, and its investigation is crucial. The topic of food system sustainability is complex, one of the cornerstones of which is consumer behavior and its investigation. In order to explore the previously unknown implicit contents that arise during consumer decisions, we examined social representation. In the research, we examine the social representation of consumers in Veszprém County (213 people) from the perspective of sustainable food consumption using a free association game, which provides an opportunity to explore implicit contents and, thanks to this, we can better understand consumers (implicit knowledge is understood as non-conscious memory). Sustainable food consumption was associated with emotionally charged, typically positive associations, with a high polarity index and a low neutrality index. The most frequently mentioned words were health (f = 75), organic (f = 62) and local producer (f = 47). They were typically associated with words related to the local economy, with a higher than average positive polarity, which suggests that consumers in Veszprém County consider preferring local foods important for sustainability. The results also point to the growing role of health, the negative perception of additives and other chemicals, and the fact that more and more people are recognizing the harmful consequences of overconsumption of animal-based foods.