Sustainable consumption and production in the food supply chain: A conceptual framework

Increased globalization and a growing world population have a great impact on the sustainability of supply chains, especially within the food industry. The way food is produced, processed, transported, and consumed has a great impact on whether sustainability is achieved throughout the whole food supply chain. Due to the complexity that persists in coordinating the members of food supply chain, food wastage has increased over the past few years. To achieve sustainable consumption and production (SCP), food industry stakeholders need to be coordinated and to have their views reflected in an optimized manner. However, not much research has been done concerning the influence of stakeholders and supply chain members’ coordination in the food industry’s SCP context. To facilitate the theory development for SCP, in this work, a short literature review on sustainable supply chain management and sustainable supply chains in the food industry is provided to give the reader current knowledge on how the past and current research are introduced in this work. Following that, different theories that drive sustainable consumption and production have been identified and focused. As a result, theories like the institutional theory, dynamic capability theory, and stakeholder theory are presented. Additionally, a conceptual framework has been developed by identifying the indicators, drivers, and barriers based on the stakeholder theory to achieve the SCP in food supply chain. Finally, limitations and future scope are discussed.