Knowledge transfer driving community-based business models towards sustainable food-related behaviours: a commons perspective

Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) are challenging the traditional food system by leveraging concepts such as self-organisation and self-management aiming to shorten the food supply chain and give customers more power. The process of re-connection between producers and customers facilitates new ways of managing and sharing knowledge across the network and paves the way to analysing AFNs through the lens of the theory of the commons. The aim of this study is to understand if the perception of AFNs as a community-oriented business model leads to sustainability-oriented changes in customers’ behaviours. With this purpose, the authors used an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and a moderation analysis with data collected from 1,971 AFN customers. The results show that those customers who strongly perceive the community-orientation of AFN business models, tend to develop more sustainable food-related behaviours. This relationship is further reinforced by individual customer’s ethical consumption awareness.