Attitudes towards organic food and local food in Norway: A comparison of preferences

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to establish which attitudes that affect Norwegian consumers’ preferences for organic food and for local food. Throughout an extensive review on previous literature we found that preferences for these two categories were most commonly influenced by environmental consciousness, animal welfare consciousness, health consciousness, and price consciousness. Recently, there has been an emerging tendency of investigating how the preferences for organic food and local food overlap. From these findings, we have developed a conceptual framework which has been applied in order to study these effects in the country context of Norway. In combination with studying consumer preferences, we find it appropriate to also consider important strategic approaches which can be utilized by stakeholders.

This study uses data from Norsk Monitor, a Norwegian national survey, and results are estimated by average marginal effects. All estimated results show the hypothesized effects. Compared to previous research, some of our results need to be viewed in light of the Norwegian agriculture. The most informative results regarding our strategic purpose is how a positive attitude towards one of the food categories increases the probability of preferring the other. This overlapping preference indicates that consumers may consider them to be complements. We can also see a strong indication of price consciousness being present among consumers who are more inclined to prefer local food than organic food. On the other hand, those who prefer organic food seems to justify the organic price premium and express a commitment to this preference. Our findings are valuable for the Norwegian agricultural system, and an important contribution to the literature on consumer preferences for organic food and local food.