Search results

The study investigated the contributions of household farming in palliating the economic effect of COVID-19 during the lockdown period. The study was questionnaire-based involving 510 participants randomly drawn from 17 Local Government Areas in Enugu State. Data were collected on demographic data, household expenditure, farm plots size, crops cultivated, sufficiency and extent farm produce contributed to palliating the effect of COVID-19 shocks. Data analysis used descriptive statistics, PCA and ANOVA. 89% households were fully involved in farming during the lockdown which positively impacted on household economy and especially SDGs 2 and 12. The lockdown improved household food production and pushed towards a positive behavioral change towards food security. 85% households indicated interest in expanding their farm size after the pandemic. Land and capital unavailability were significant barriers to taking farming as a major occupation. Several policy options were proposed to improve food production at household levels to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 crisis on food security.

This study aims to examine diners’ behavioral intention to visit an edible insect restaurant, which is known to play an important role in sustainability, by integrating the theory of planned behavior and the norm activation theory.

A total of 439 samples were collected in South Korea. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The attitudes were influenced by subjective norms. Intentions were affected by the attitudes, the subjective norms and the perceived behavioral control. In addition, the five dimensions of cognitive triggers, which include environmental awareness, ascribed responsibility, biospheric value, environmental concern and perceived effectiveness, positively affected personal norms, and the personal norms positively influenced behavioral intentions.

It is an important practical implication of this study that tourism practitioners were delivered with the knowledge of establishing marketing strategies based on the destination’s green image of insect restaurants.

This study is expected to contribute to the extant knowledge, which will enable an understanding of the sustainability values of edible insect restaurants, and it will guide tourism practitioners to establish effective sustainable practices for the tourism industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer perceptions of more sustainable protein alternatives to conventional meat.

A mixed method design of interviews and an online survey identified key drivers and barriers to the consumption of laboratory-grown meat, edible insects and plant-based meat substitutes, with meat attachment accounted for in analyses. Differences between personal preference and perceptions of alternative proteins’ role in addressing global environmental concerns were also explored.

Findings indicated that plant-based substitutes were favoured for personal consumption for moral and ethical reasons and edible insects were least favoured due to aversion. Meat attachment was significantly associated with personal willingness to consume alternative proteins in each of the three cases. Results challenged previous research that had proposed that when considering the effectiveness of certain alternatives in addressing global environmental issues, people may advocate them but not want to consume them personally. Results imply that the congruity of these perceptions is more complex.

Avenues for future research, including applications for exploring tailored marketing are suggested based on the preliminary findings of this study.

This study asked consumers to consider three alternative proteins alongside one another for the first time, exploring how meat attachment is associated with perceptions and quantifying the congruity of consumers’ personal perceptions and global perceptions of these alternative proteins.

This is a conceptual study to analyze the potential of enset-based culinary tourism for sustainable rural development and to obtain a place as a niche tourism market in South-Western Ethiopia. It assumed enset agro-biodiversity as the effect of ages of environment, genetic resources and cultural interaction as a distinctive regional image.

This an exploratory paper based on an in-depth interview, field observation and content analysis of documents. By means of in-depth interviews, the researchers managed to gather extended information from community elders and experts in culture and tourism offices selected based on a snowball technique. Besides, it has gone through systematic reviews of about 180 empirical and conceptual articles, books and conference papers with a critical reading of the content, identification of categories, examination and interpretation of ideas, to supplement the in-depth-interview. The thematic analysis applied to identify various ideas, concepts, categories and relationships to produce themes presented under discussion and results.

The study found enset-based culinary tourism not only improve the local economy and regional image, but also it would enhance conservation of traditional farming system, biodiversity, food heritages, genetic varieties and livestock. It also identified 18 enset food varieties compatible with the principle of balanced diets. Finally, the study advised rural development planners to consider enset-based culinary tourism so that it would revive lost food traditions and consumption patterns, enhance the regional heritage and destination branding.

The research is a conceptual study that lacked empirical investigation concerning the livelihood impact, gender implication and actual tourist data. Therefore, future research needs to focus on the aforementioned limitations.

This study addressed SW Ethiopia, which is the primary center of Ensete ventricosum, and argued that enset-based culinary tourism would help to build regional image and obtain a place as a niche rural tourism destination. It would also contribute to the conservation of food heritages, environmentally sustainable farming system, soil conservation, crop diversities and livestock population in addition to producing tourist experience. Moreover, it would encourage the revival of traditional consumption, reinvent lost food traditions and identities.

It was hoped that rural tourism would eventually improve the livelihood and enhance the capability of resilience. It is also expected to maintain the traditional social-economic structure based on the enset farm while fostering cultural development.

To the knowledge of the researchers there is no previous work on enset based-culinary tourism in Ethiopia and probably there is no published culinary tourism paper elsewhere.

Household food insecurity and poor well-being have increased during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and resulting lockdown measures. Home food growing has been associated with improved food access and well-being, but it is unknown what role it plays during food supply crises and lockdown. It is also unclear how home food growing and social restrictions may affect opinions about growing food in urban areas (i.e. urban agriculture; UA).

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted during the UK national lockdown in March-April 2020 to measure home food growing, perceived food insecurity, well-being, and opinions of UA. The participants were 477 UK-based adults (369 female, mean age 39.57 years ± 13.36); 152 participants were engaged in home food growing prior to the pandemic. Responses were compared to data collected from a separate sample of participants before the pandemic (N=583) to explore potential shifts in opinions about UA.

Participants who engaged in home food growing had lower levels of food insecurity (U_­=19894.50, z=−3.649, p<0.001, r=−0.167) and higher well-being (U=19566.50, z=−3.666, p<0.001, r=−0.168) than those not engaged in home food growing. Perceived food insecurity partially mediated the relationship between home food growing and well-being; home food growing was associated with less food insecurity, which in turn was associated with better well-being. There were no differences in opinions of UA compared to the sample of participants from before the pandemic.

Home food growing may have had a protective effect over perceived food security and well-being in the early stages the pandemic. Opinions of UA were positive and unchanged compared to data collected pre-pandemic. Policies that support home food growing and access to suitable growing spaces and resources may be beneficial for food system resilience and well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to understand determinants of food waste through analysing patterns of practices including shopping, planning, consumption of leftovers and attitudes around best-before dates.

A survey and waste composition analysis of 142 households was conducted in the City of Toronto. Bivariate analyses and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a structural equation model were used to identify relationships between per capita food waste, household socio-demographic characteristics and household food practices.

Constructs related to planning practices and best-before date practices were identified through the CFA. Household size and the best-before construct were negatively correlated with per capita food waste. The planning construct had no correlation, which may be attributed to the influence of the retail environment in encouraging unplanned purchases. The best-before construct was significantly correlated with the presence of children in the home, an indicator of the compromises that parents make in domestic provisioning to ensure healthy foods for their children, such as more caution in handling items after their best-before dates.

This is the first study of its kind that uses directly measured per capita food waste from a waste composition study in a structural equation model with a construct related to best-before dates to determine drivers of food waste. It is also the first to find that children in the home can have an indirect influence on food waste through the household's best-before practices.

Drawing on food consumption research and human-animal studies, this paper aims to explore how the meanings related to a living horse may be transferred to those of horsemeat. This is accomplished by constructing a nuanced understanding of how different semantic meaning categories of accepting/avoiding consuming horsemeat relate to each other.

The current data are collected from various sources of media discussions, including online news, online discussion forums, blog postings and printed articles, generated in Finland after the year 2013. The data are analysed applying Greimas’ (1987) semiotic square to open up the semantic meaning categories appearing in the media discussions.

The semiotic square shows that the meanings of horsemeat arise between the binary oppositions of human-like and animal-like. In this structure, the category of human-like makes eating horsemeat impossible, whereas the category of animal-like makes horsemeat good to eat. The main categories are completed and contrasted by the categories of not human-like and not animal-like. They represent horsemeat as an acceptable food, but only after certain justifications.

The data are based on Finnish media texts, and therefore, the identified categories are interpreted in this specific cultural context.

The current semiotic analysis adds to the existing food consumption research by shedding light on the cultural barriers that make something edible or inedible. By so doing, the findings present a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the horse as a special kind of meat animal and the justifications for eating horsemeat. Consequently, the findings offer new insights concerning changing food consumption behaviours into a more sustainable direction, pointing out the hidden meanings that influence this process.