Search results

This study aims to explore the interrelationships among quality and safety metrics within the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). Its primary objective is to identify key indicators and their respective influences on food security outcomes, thereby enriching comprehension of the intricate dynamics within global food security.

The analysis encompasses data from 113 countries for the year 2022, utilizing Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) models to identify significant drivers of both the GFSI and quality and safety dimensions. This methodological approach enables the examination of probabilistic connections among different indicators, providing a structured framework for investigating the complex dynamics of food security.

The study highlights the critical role of regulatory frameworks, access to clean drinking water, and food safety mechanisms in fostering food security. Key findings reveal that “nutrition monitoring and surveillance” has the highest probability (75%) of achieving a high-performance state, whereas “national dietary guidelines” have the highest probability (41%) of achieving a low-performance state. High GFSI performance is associated with excelling in indicators such as “access to drinking water” and “food safety mechanisms”, while low performance is linked to underperformance in “national dietary guidelines” and “nutrition labeling”. “Protein quality” and “dietary diversity” are identified as the most critical indicators affecting both the GFSI and quality and safety dimensions.

This research operationalizes a probabilistic technique to analyze the interdependencies among quality and safety indicators within the GFSI. By uncovering the probabilistic connections between these indicators, the study enhances understanding of the underlying dynamics that influence food security outcomes. The findings highlight the critical roles of regulatory frameworks, access to clean drinking water, and food safety mechanisms, offering actionable insights that empower policymakers to make evidence-based decisions and allocate resources effectively. Ultimately, this research significantly contributes to the advancement of food security interventions and the achievement of sustainable development goals related to food quality and safety.

This current research aims to reveal customers’ behaviours who purchased à la carte menu service in a chain hotel operating in Istanbul, Türkiye after the Covid-19 outbreak. In addition to this main objective, customers’ main course preferences, tipping, complaining, maintaining eating and drinking habits, local food preferences, photograph taking and food waste behaviours were determined as the sub-research objectives.

Qualitative research method was adopted, and naturalistic observation was chosen as the data collection tool in this study. Firstly, an observation form was created based on the literature. To ensure the content validity, seven experts (five researchers and two experienced hotel employees) were consulted on 15 July 2021. After revising the form, a pilot study was carried out between 4 August and 29 September 2021. By conducting the pilot study, it was aimed to prevent any unpredictable behaviours of customers. As a result, four new items were added to, and two items were removed from the form. Then, 341 customers who purchased à la carte menu service in the restaurant of the hotel chain were observed between 7 October 2021 and 28 January 2022.

It was revealed that 52% of the customers who purchased à la carte menu services did not make any reservations, while approximately 59% of the customers with reservations did not stay at the hotel in which the research was conducted. In addition, 69% of them started to eat meal together; 56% of them paid in “cash”; 48% of them preferred local food and beverages; 41% left food on the plate; and 43% of them gave tip. In contrast, very few customers (6%) engaged in complaint behaviour.

First, data were collected during the post-pandemic period when international travels were mostly restricted and thus, the researcher observed mostly Turkish customers at the restaurant. Second, only those customers sitting at the six tables close to the guest welcoming were observed. Third, just one observer took part in the data collection process. Fourth, the researchers chose one out of two restaurants of the hotel because only Asian cuisine was served and children under 12 years of age were not allowed to enter the other restaurant. Fifth, focusing on only a hotel and using naturalistic observation as a data collection tool may be shown among the limitations of this study.

This paper presents the customers’ behaviours who preferred à la carte menu service in a chain hotel operating in İstanbul, Türkiye after the Covid-19 outbreak. Although there are some studies focusing on changing of customer preferences during the post-pandemic period, “observation” was not preferred as a data collection tool by most of the researchers; hence, the findings of this study are useful for both researchers and educationists in tourism industry.

The paper aims to explore how values and knowledge are expressed in student’s discussions about food and health.

Food practices present a complex phenomenon extending beyond biomedical descriptions, including social dynamics of food in families and communities. Contextual conditions of social groups and settings have significant impacts on food choices and practices. Although values constitute a central part of educational goals, deliberate values education remains an often-neglected area, with a tendency in both curricula and educational practice to focus on knowledge and overlook how values intersect with knowledge. The paper utilises group interviews supported by participant observations to study the food and health practices as expressed in students' discussions.

The paper’s findings show how values are expressed together with knowledge as value-knowledges around food and health within the social contexts of family, cultural identities and peer relationships. While moving through their lives, students draw on and utilise biomedical, social-cultural and sensory value-knowledges, simultaneously considering the nutrition and taste of foods, the value of connecting with family and peers in cultural settings as well as getting enough food to feel satiated.

The paper presents an original approach around the necessity to consider and integrate cultural identities in discussions and education about food and health to empower students and their communities in a way that is socially just and equitable. This involves shifting discussions of health education away from students as (ir)rational obstacles but rather as partners in co-creating knowledge for sustainable food and health equity.

The competitiveness of destinations is crucial for tourism. In this context, the study aims to uncover customer satisfaction, experiences, feelings, and thoughts by conducting a comparative analysis of social media comments from various competitive tourism destinations.

Big data research was conducted to answer the research questions. The data was collected on a social media platform focusing on three destinations in the Mediterranean region. Three methods were employed to analyse the data: sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and named-entity recognition.

This study addressed traveller satisfaction levels. It identified the topics concerning each destination, examined the emotions expressed by travellers about these topics, explored the potential impact on future behaviour, and investigated the features of the destinations and satisfaction levels about these features. It also identified the prominent food and beverage names in destinations and explored tourists’ preferences regarding these foods and beverages.

The limitations of this study relate to the sample. The data used in this study was solely obtained from a single social media platform and focused on English-only comments. Further research that includes different social media platforms for hotel categories and considers reviews in local languages could capture a broader range of customer opinions and experiences.

Policymakers can gain insight into a destination’s position in the competitive landscape. This study has numerous implications for policymakers in the relevant destinations and managers in the design and implementation of services.

The findings of this study can have broader societal implications if considered and implemented by decision-makers and tourism businesses in the context of competitiveness.

The study’s originality lies in integrating multiple disciplines and comparing tourism destinations using big data. This study improves the understanding of competitiveness in three specific Mediterranean destinations. Previous research has focused on different contexts in these Mediterranean destinations. Therefore, the study fills this gap by focusing simultaneously on all three destinations in the context of competitiveness.

This paper aims to utilize an extended involvement-commitment and trust commitment model to examine post-consumption decisions related to food delivery app use.

A self-administered online survey was used to collect data from food delivery app users in the USA.

Findings validate a favorable role of perceived app security and menu description on trust in app recommendations. Trust was found to be positively related to involvement, commitment and willingness to provide feedback. The positive moderating role of perceived convenience and rewards and incentives was also confirmed in relation to consumers’ trust in app recommendations, and involvement and commitment

A key contribution of this study includes the development of a comprehensive model to understand postconsumption decisions related to the usage of food delivery apps. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first to unveil the antecedent and moderating factors related to food delivery app users’ willingness to provide feedback, share personal data and to pay more.

We aim to explore how the COVID-19 crisis has initiated entrepreneurship amongst micro-scale businesses in the notably vulnerable street food industry. We highlight Malaysian street food vendors’ remarkable resilience as they evolved from informal enterprises into innovative entrepreneurs during the pandemic. This involves comprehending the pandemic’s impact and the coping strategies these businesses adopt to endure, evolve and thrive.

We carried out a semi-structured interview with 20 street food vendors in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. By using a qualitative approach and integrating theories on appraisal, resource management and self-regulated activities, this paper explores vendors’ experiences on their journey towards becoming entrepreneurs regardless of limited resources.

Despite the disruption, COVID-19 offers a crucial wake-up call even for micro-scale businesses. We discover the capability of street food vendors to outlast crisis through transformation into individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset. They adapted by diversifying their offerings and implementing new strategies like digital marketing and e-commerce. We also emphasise the contribution of family members in providing psychosocial support and navigating business challenges as an advantage of employing a highly self-efficacious individual within the group. This transformation not only ensures the survival of micro-scale enterprises but also underscores their potential to thrive and innovate, even in the face of adversity.

This paper extends the existing literature on street vending by integrating the appraisal theory of emotion, resource-based view theory and self-efficacy theory to explore how street food vendors with limited resources have managed to transform the informal business nature into an entrepreneurial environment under the pressure of a crisis.

This paper aims to assess the determinants of food certificate adoption and analyse the impacts of food certificates on e-commerce income among small online agri-food sellers in Indonesia.

The authors used data from an online survey of 228 small-online agri-food sellers in East Java, Indonesia. This study aims to focus on two food certificates: a mandatory Halal (Islamic dietary law) certificate and the P-IRT certificate, a food safety certificate for home-based businesses. A maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) estimator was employed to account for selection bias and endogeneity.

The study highlights the continued importance of certification in agri-food markets, including e-commerce and the need to consider the degree of substitutability and resource allocation between multiple food certificates. It finds that online agri-food sellers adopting the Halal certificate earn two to three times higher compared to non-adopters. Conversely, the gross income per month from e-commerce sales is 78% lower among those adopting the P-IRT certificate. Moreover, access to regulatory information sources motivates the likelihood of adopting food certificates. In contrast, the business size, marketing channels, contractual relationship and management capabilities are insignificant factors for the adoption of any of the Halal and P-IRT certificate combinations.

Results from this research might be specific to the context of the focus study area, thereby reducing their generalisability. In addition to gathering representative samples, future research should also capture more complex dimensions of food certificates. These include the cost of acquiring food certificates, online sellers' perceptions of food certificate adoption, and emerging topics such as group certification and the use of technology.

To the authors' knowledge, this research is one of the first studies investigating the adoption of food certificates within the e-commerce setting. This study also contributes to the small number of studies looking at multiple certificate adoption and food certificate issues from the retailers' perspectives

The aim of this study is to investigate, in the Turkish market, the elements on the front and back labels of wine bottles depicting the characteristics of the wines and their impact on the purchasing decisions of wine consumers in Turkey.

The questionnaire consisted of 24 items that used a five-point Likert scale. Data were collected through a self-administered online survey completed by 340 participants. Following exploratory factor analysis with principal component analysis and varimax rotation, the number of factors was reduced to six: front and back-label consumer experiences, front label design elements, intrinsic cue information, back-label contents, storage/flavor profile and health warnings. The final section of the questionnaire presented five digitally designed front and back labels and asked participants to indicate their preferences.

The results indicated that reading/checking the front and back labels on wine bottles was more important than all other factors. Turkish consumers generally prefer traditional front label designs, while female consumers are more open to contemporary designs compared to male consumers. Back-label designs with more information are generally more acceptable, although female consumers with good wine knowledge may not consider food pairing, storage, or service information.

This research was designed only based on the elements of the front and back labels. The research should expand to include packaging characteristics such as bottle shape, bottle closure, price, and situational use.

The findings of this study offer valuable insights for Turkish wine producers aiming to enhance their marketing strategies by customizing their wine label designs to better align with the market.

This study is the preliminary study to investigate Turkish consumers purchasing decisions based on the front- and back-label characteristics by using both verbal and visual elements.

This study aims to explore the link between prevalent risk factors for early childhood diarrhea, including hygiene, feeding, weaning practices and maternal education and the occurrence and severity of early childhood diarrhea in Saudi Arabia.

A case-control study was conducted, involving 98 mothers from the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia (51 cases and 47 controls). Data were collected from both hospital and community sources. The collected data were statistically analyzed and depicted using descriptive statistics and frequency tables.

Demographic data revealed that 60% of mothers were housewives, 75% had normal deliveries and all babies were full term. In the study cohort, 44% of children aged one to two years. Four domains were compared: diarrheal management, hygiene, weaning and feeding practices. Diarrheal management was suboptimal in some cases: 29% increased fluid intake, 10% maintained adequate food intake, 50% sought medical advice, 58% were familiar with oral rehydration solutions and only 37% used them. Hygiene practices were deficient, with 35% using wipes or sanitizers, 64% handwashing before feeding and 52% adhering to the recommended 10-s duration. Controls exhibited better hygiene practices. Weaning practices were generally similar, with no significant differences between the two groups.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to collectively report on the risk factors linked to early childhood diarrhea in Saudi Arabia. This study yields significant insights, highlighting the crucial role of managing diarrhea, educating mothers and implementing proper household practices in impacting the occurrence and severity of this perilous ailment.

Based on the Natural resource-based view (NRBV), this study aims to analyze the association between the Sustainable Development Goals related to Gender Equality, Decent Work, Innovation, and Climatic Action in the Food Industry.

A quantitative study is adopted based on the 2019 World Bank Enterprise Survey microdata. The database includes 1,242 food enterprises from 16 European Union countries. We applied logistic regression with cluster robust standard errors.

Despite global efforts to promote decent work and gender equity, the anticipated results have not yet been achieved, suggesting varying performance in different contexts. Food firms, characterized by significant environmental impacts and seasonal tasks, employ diverse Human Resource Management (HRM) strategies based on whether they pursue innovation or environmental objectives. Grounded in the NRBV, our findings underscore the importance of investing in qualified workers and offering attractive wages to meet environmental goals, as well as providing stable contracts for female workers. The NRBV framework also highlights the crucial role of product and process innovations, whether green or not, in achieving climate action objectives.

European policies must be adapted to the human resources characteristics in the food industry, providing specific training on environmental and innovation issues and contributing to more work stability and gender equality.

Our study applies the NRBV to analyze how human resources and product/process innovations can boost environmental preservation in an industry characterized by strong environmental impacts, seasonal tasks, and financial constraints.