The role of environmental attitudes and consumption patterns in consumers' preferences for sustainable food from circular farming system: a six EU case studies

Abstract

Decisions about what we consume have environmental repercussions and, therefore, implications for future generations. Consumers' ability to pay more for sustainable food stimulates production strategies, like circular agriculture, aiding the European Green Deal's sustainable food system. With the aim of analysing the preferences and willingness to pay of European consumers for food labelled as obtained by more sustainable systems in terms of reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and the optimisation of soil nutrients, a survey with 5591 participants from Spain, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Croatia, and Belgium was conducted. The survey was designed to analyse three food products (pork meat, milk, and bread) obtained through different production systems (circular, conventional, and organic) using the discrete choice experiment methodology. The survey included questions about consumers' environmental attitudes and consumption behaviour, to identify their influence over preferences regarding sustainable food products. Results revealed that over 27% of consumers preferred circular food, unveiling a potential market. This preference highlighted the effect of consumers' environmental attitudes. Those who actively engaged in recycling were more prone to choose circular food and shown a tendency to go for less conventional options. Consumers' WTP was consistently higher for circular milk compared to conventional across all the studied countries. However, for circular pork and bread, this greater WTP was reported exclusively in Spain and Croatia. It was suggested that sectors involved in a sustainable food production should standardise labels for circular food, create educational programmes about problems generated by unsustainable consumption, and promote consumption of circular products.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40100-025-00350-0.

Keywords: Circular food products; Consumer preference and willingness to pay; Consumption behaviour; Environmental attitudes; Labelled discrete choice experiment; Sustainable production.

Fig. 1

Methodological approach

Fig. 2

DCE Scenario 1 for each product (pork, milk, and bread), Spain case study