Understanding public attitudes and preferences for healthy and sustainable diets

Challenges

The Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium, a global network of researchers, published a report in 2020 titled “Pathways to Sustainable Land-Use and Food Systems in the United Kingdom by 2050.” This report outlined how sustainable food and land-use systems can contribute to raising climate ambition, aligning climate mitigation and biodiversity protection policies in the UK.  The report recommends that existing and emerging national policies within each of the four UK nations should consider the strong evidence that a healthy diet could play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity. The report also highlights that modelling consumer behaviour is likely to become even more important.

Within Scotland, the “Food Standards Scotland Strategy for 2021-2026: Healthy, Safe, Sustainable: Driving Scotland’s Food Future” incorporates these recommendations in its values and guiding principles. The FSS strategy highlights the role of “social research in understanding what influences human attitudes and behaviour so that policies are capable of driving positive change”.

There are several Goals defined for 2021-2026. One of them consists of delivering a food environment which empowers consumers to make safe, healthy, and sustainable choices. This can be achieved by driving and influencing strategies for improving access to healthy and sustainable diets for the people of Scotland. Another goal is to engage with all parts of society in Scotland, to understand the issues that matter to consumers and provide information that is tailored to their needs. To achieve these goals, we need the best available data and methods to strengthen insights into behaviours, attitudes, and wider food interests of the Scottish population. We also need to integrate evidence from research on public health and demographics to ensure advice on dietary health improvement is targeted to the appropriate population groups for maximum benefit.

Questions

Solutions

This project is using social research methods to understand public attitudes and preferences for healthy and sustainable diets, considering the socioeconomic characteristics of consumers, to better inform future policies that aim at dietary behaviour positive changes.

Identifying international examples of successful approaches to driving long-term changes in dietary behaviour

To do this, we are identifying successful approaches to driving long-term changes in dietary behaviour across the international stage. We are reviewing the existing evidence, around the world, on behaviour change interventions that work not only in the short-term but are also successful in maintaining long-term changes in dietary behaviour. We are investigating socioeconomic facilitators and barriers to behaviour change and are focusing extensively on the issue of sustainability in healthy diets.

Profiling consumer attitudes towards healthy and sustainable diets

We are understanding how consumers define a healthy and sustainable diet and developing an attitudinal scale regarding healthy and sustainable diets. This is producing rich descriptions of the different points of view that exist about healthy and sustainable diets by sampling the range and diversity of views expressed.

We are also identifying issues where there is consensus, as well as those that distinguish points of view. This is leading to a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions of what a healthy and sustainable diet is, which might differ from policymakers’ definitions. The attitudinal scale is providing a measure of people’s underlying general attitudes, such as beliefs and perceptions in the major dimensions of the perceived value of healthy and sustainable diets. By identifying groups or “types” of persons who share similar attitudes, as well as providing a measure of their attitudes, we are providing relevant evidence to inform more targeted policies aimed at dietary changes.

Identifying the drivers of healthy and sustainable diets of most value to consumers

We are identifying the drivers of healthy and sustainable diets that are of most value to consumers and assessing how those drivers vary across different groups in terms of their socioeconomic characteristics as well as their attitudes on healthy and sustainable diets. This is allowing us to identify the attributes of healthy and sustainable diets which are key for the general population. We are informing policy on how to develop strategies to change consumers’ behaviour regarding healthy and sustainable diets that are personalised to different socio-economic and attitudinal groups.

Project Partners

Progress