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This study to investigate several issues related to food choice and consumption patterns in different countries, including health-related factors; economic and availability aspects; emotional determinants; social, cultural and religious influences; marketing and advertising campaigns; and finally environmental concerns.

The present study was based on a questionnaire that was exclusively prepared for the project, and which was applied to collect data in different countries, in particular Croatia, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Portugal, which are typically associated with the Mediterranean diet (MD).

The results obtained allowed, in general, to conclude that in all five countries the motivations related to health as well as environment and politics were the more relevant to determine people’s eating habits (scores varying from 0.3 to 0.7). Women were more influenced by eating motivations than men, and people with moderate exercise were more susceptible to health and environmental motivations and less to emotional, social or marketing motivations (p < 0.001 in all cases). It was also observed that people who adopted a special diet were more prone to eating motivations and that the emotional motivations were more pronounced in people with eating disorders (p < 0.001). Finally, people without chronic diseases or allergies were even more influenced by health motivations than those who actually suffered from these health problems (p < 0.001 in both cases).

This work is important because of the multinational coverage, thus allowing to evaluate the most relevant factors that influenced the food choices of the populations around the Mediterranean Sea, sharing the common link to the MD. The study allowed concluding that, in general, the food choices were primarily determined by health factors and also by concerns related to the environment and sustainability as well as by political influences.

This study aims to investigate the food choice motivations and some healthy food intake among Ardabil adults with different socioeconomic status.

The analysis is based on a focus group study conducted in September 2018. Self-assessed other food choice motivations, healthy food intake and socioeconomic status were reported in questionnaires. The study data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA test and χ² test in groups of study.

Price was a primary motivation of food choice for low-level socioeconomic status persons. The wealthiest people total vegetable consumption was 3.59Â ± 0.004 serving/day, whereas the total vegetable consumption of poorest participants was significantly less than them (p = 0.012). Of the socioeconomics category 1 (SEC1) group participants, 82 per cent said that they consider food price when they were purchasing for their households, while only 28 per cent of SEC4 group said that they consider food prices when food choosing. Only 1 per cent of this group participants pay attention to food label when they choose foods.

This is the first study that investigated the food choice motivations in Ardabil adults. The results indicated that food price is the most critical food choice motivation. Based on this study results, the food policymaker can change people food security and food choices with some programs like as healthy food subsidies and unhealthy food taxes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors underlying Lebanese consumers’ food motivations and segment them based on those motivations.

The data in the study were collected from the main shopping districts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, through a structured questionnaire. Respondents were intercepted by employing simple random sampling. Out of 700 people approached, 411 surveys were collected, giving a response rate of 58.7 per cent. After gathering the food choice motives under main groups by employing exploratory factor analysis, the study used two step cluster analysis.

The food choice motives were grouped under eight dimensions: ecological, sensory, convenience and availability, health, weight, mood, price and religion motives. Based on the food choice motives, the study identified four dissimilar clusters, namely, careless, conscious, hedonic and health and weight conscious. The study clearly indicated that there are significant differences among clusters in terms of the food choice motives, attitudes towards healthy eating, exercising, food quality and natural organic food and socio demographic characteristics.

There are numerous studies on food choice motives in the literature investigating certain countries. This study is the first study investigating the subject in one of the Middle Eastern countries, Lebanon.

This study aims to investigate the food choice motivations of rural households using a cross-sectional dataset of 510 households from northwest Vietnam interviewed in 2016.

A modified Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) is used to assess factors related to food choice and explore relationships between food choice factors, diet quality and various sociodemographic characteristics.

Results show four distinct food choice factors: “Natural and healthy,” “Familiarity,” “Balanced diet” and “Convenience.” Two distinct consumer clusters are identified: “Health-conscious” households and “Pragmatic” households. “Health-conscious” households rank “Balanced diet” and “Natural and healthy” highly, while “Pragmatic” households prioritize “Convenience” and “Familiarity.” “Health-conscious” households have significantly more diverse diets, are wealthier and have a greater geographic concentration in the high vegetable density per capita-high elevation areas (36%). Their main food preparers are more educated and about 13% have Kinh ethnicity.

Further research is warranted to explore the temporal dimension of parental food choice motivations given the changing agrifood system in Vietnam.

This study is one of the few studies that assess the food choice motivations among ethnic minority groups in a rural setting.

Consumer food behavior has received considerable attention from marketers, researchers and regulators. With the rising obesity epidemic worldwide, the existing literature and previous reviews provide a limited understanding of consumers’ unhealthy food choices. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate consumer psychology for food choices in terms of mental processes and behavior.

This systematic literature review analyzed 84 research papers accessed from the Web of Science database and selected high-quality marketing journals. A detailed analysis identified themes arranged in an organizing framework. Gaps, limitations, convergence and ambivalent findings were noted to derive future research directions.

Major themes in the literature include food marketers’ actions (food stimuli and context), environmental influence (micro and macro) and consumer psychology and personal factors, leading to food choice related decisions. The antecedents and consequences of food choice healthiness are summarized. Several studies converged on the benefits of health motivations and goals, food literacy and customizing meals bottom-up on food choice healthiness.

This review helps researchers gain state-of-the-art understanding on consumer psychology for food choices. It presents ambivalent and converging findings, gaps and limitations of extant research to inform researchers about issues that need to be addressed in the literature. This review presents future research questions to guide research on critical issues. This literature review contributes to marketing domain literature on consumer’s food well-being and overall well-being.

This review offers actionable insights for food marketers, policymakers and nongovernmental organizations to drive consumer demand for healthier foods, focusing on food labeling, food environment, message framing and raising consumer awareness.

This review offers current understanding of consumer psychology for food choices focusing on healthiness, an aspect lacking in previous literature reviews.

There is growing awareness internationally of the need to reduce intake of added sugars. The purpose of this study was to examine consumer sugar knowledge and food label use.

This cross-sectional online survey included 229 adult participants (85% female and 15% male). Participants completed measures of demographics, sugar knowledge, interest in food and nutrition, food choice motivations and beliefs and food label use. The sample of convenience showed that participants were from Australasia (n = 90), the USA (n = 90) and other Western (Europe and Canada, n = 49) countries.

Overall, participant sugar knowledge predicted nutrition label use over and above individual demographic and psychological characteristics (interest in food and nutrition, health beliefs and food choice motivations) (p < 0.001). Country comparisons revealed that those in Australasia reported lower sugar knowledge compared to the USA (p =< 0.001) and other Western countries (p = 0.028).

Overall, participant sugar knowledge predicted nutrition label use over and above individual demographic and psychological characteristics (interest in food and nutrition, health beliefs and food choice motivations) (p < 001). Country comparisons revealed that those in Australasia reported lower sugar knowledge compared to the USA (p =< 0.001) and other Western countries (p = 0.028).

This study explored sugar knowledge as a unique predictor of food label use, taking into account individual characteristics in demographics, food choice motivations and health beliefs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the continuity and/or rupture in food motivations as revealed from documents issued from Châtelaine in 1960‐1961, 1970, 1980 and 1990.

A historical content analysis was used to explore the food motivations in Châtelaine. A total of 51 issues were read and all documents referring to food and nutrition were photocopied except for advertisements. Variables associated with each document were grouped into four themes: health and diseases, food and nutrition, body and society. Descriptive statistics were conducted using SPSS (version 10.1, 1999).

Overall, the content analysis has indicated that food and nutrition is the dominant motivation (n  =  430) followed by health and disease (n  =  292), society (n  =  71) and body concerns (n  =  70). Each decade was associated with major sub‐themes. In brief, 1960 was the year of food, family and tradition; 1970 was the transition year; 1980 was the year of knowledge, culpability and environment; 1990 was the nutritional education year.

Study done using the first year of each decade and in a single magazine cannot be generalized. Moreover, these results are specific to a French‐Canadian context. Further research on other media could provide more insight into some of the relationships explored in this study.

The findings suggest that the dominant motivations are projecting in a different way from one year to another. These results support the need to take into consideration the role of media in shaping women's food preferences and the evolution of these motivations over time.

The purpose of this study was to examine consumer’s perceptions of cloud kitchens, including the influence of perceived innovativeness (PI), utility motivations (price and food varieties), and food safety risk perceptions (FSRP) on trust; the impact of hedonic motivations and trust on attitude; and the moderating effect of FSRP on the relationship between utility motivations (food varieties) and trust. The relationships were examined with respect to gender and marital status.

The Theory of Consumption Value served as the theoretical underpinning of this study. Data was collected with an online survey (n = 316) using the Qualtrics panel. The partial least squares–structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the survey data.

PI, utilitarian motivations (price) and hedonic motivations (food varieties) positively influenced trust, whereas trust positively influenced attitude. FSRP negatively impacted trust and moderated the relationship between utility motivations (food varieties) and trust. Hedonic motivations positively influenced consumers’ attitudes. Multi-group analyses highlighted the differences attributed to gender and marital status.

PI and utility motivations influenced trust, supporting the notion that consumers are open to new and convenient ways to order food. Additionally, the negative influence of FSRP on trust and its moderating role on the path between food varieties and trust highlights the importance of FSRP on food consumption. Finally, this study provided insight into the influence of gender and marital status on perceptions of ordering from cloud kitchens.

The cloud kitchen business model is undergoing exponential growth, and this study provides an understanding of cloud kitchens from a consumer’s perspective.

Drawing on a representative survey, this paper aims to identify the determinants of functional food consumption in Croatia. The objective is to introduce and test a conceptual model that four sets of factors (food choice motivations, demographic and socio-economic characteristics, knowledge of functional food and health status) underpin variations in functional food consumption.

Data were collected via face-to-face interviews conducted in respondents' homes. Consumption of functional foods is modelled as a bootstrapped ordered probit model.

Results confirm the significant influence of all four sets of factors for explaining variations in functional food consumption. Heavier users of functional food are those that place a greater weighting on health and convenience in food choice. In contrast, the salience of familiarity in food choice is negatively related with functional food consumption. Females and those with higher levels of educational attainment are heavier consumers of functional food. While perceived health status appears not to have any significant relationship with functional food consumption, there is a link with body mass index. Functional foods appeal most to those concerned about their health and desire convenient, “quick fixes”. Such “quick fixes” may however be employed at the expense of more fundamental adjustments to diet and fitness, which may provide the basis for superior overall disease prevention/health promotion.

The study represents one of the first assessments of functional food consumption in Central and Eastern Europe, introducing and testing a comprehensive conceptual model.

Both governments and the food industry are interested in plant-based products. New products are advertised as climate-friendly, with plant-based materials increasingly replacing animal-based content. In Finland, oat milk dominates the plant-based milk market. The authors studied what features young and urban users of plant-based and cow's milk value in oat milk for coffee and how the preferences of the users relate to ethical food-choice motives.

In total, 308 students filled in an e-questionnaire. The survey used best-worst scaling (BWS), a discrete choice approach, to measure the perceived values related to oat milk characteristics. The ethical motives were measured by a version of the Lindeman and Väänänen scale. Also the respondents' diets were asked. Preference clusters were identified and viewed with the ethical food-choice motives and diets.

The respondent group that exclusively used cow's milk attached more value to taste, added nutritional elements, discounts and recommendations by friends. The rest of the respondents attached more value to origin and sustainability-related features of oat milk. In the six-cluster solution, one extreme cluster was valuing taste and the other was valuing sustainability-related issues. All the ethical food-choice motives: ecological welfare, political values and religion were (roughly) the higher the cluster valued sustainability-related items. The respondents eating meat were more likely to belong to the clusters valuing taste than non-meat eaters that belong more likely to clusters valuing sustainability-related features.

Very few earlier studies have explored the heterogeneity of valuations of plant-based products and the products' relationship with ethical food-choice motives.