European consumer-citizens are concerned about sustainability issues when it comes to agriculture and food. However, there is a gap between the degree of concern and the rate of choices for relatively more sustainable food products. There are many potential reasons for this, but lack of information and guidance during choice is one of them. To help consumers making more informed choices at the point of sale, a framework for sustainability labelling is discussed at the European level.
This report reports on results from a consumer-citizen survey study across eight Nordic-Baltic countries about the topic of sustainability understanding in the food context. The survey was conducted in the summer of 2022 through a representative online panel and around 600 respondents per country. The project is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and conducted by the MAPP Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark, with the contribution of a steering committee of representatives from each country.
The aim of the project is to provide knowledge that can support discussions on sustainability labelling from a Nordic-Baltic perspective. Research insights into consumer-citizens allow decision makers to know where consumer-citizens are in their current understanding. This serves as an important input for discussing an efficient design of and communication about a future sustainability labelling framework, that might take departure in what resonates with current understanding but also providing further learning, thus empowering consumer-citizens to make informed food choices.
The authors invite readers to delve into the details of the results provided and arrive at their own interpretations and implications. However, a few overarching conclusions across the data are provided. Firstly, we conclude that the results show that consumer-citizens in the Nordic-Baltic countries well understand the basic and most widely used definition of sustainable development as provided by the Brundtland commission. However, secondly, we conclude that even though this basic definition addresses both environmental and social aspects, results show that consumer-citizens in the Nordic-Baltic countries mostly think of environmentally-related aspects and issues overall as well as in the context of food. Thirdly, we conclude that results seem to reflect that the media and stakeholder agendas can influence which aspects and issues consumer-citizens name and point to when it comes to sustainability in the food context. Fourthly, it becomes apparent that the more concrete the level (e.g., at the product level), the more diverse is the understanding of which sustainability aspects and issues are thought to be relevant. Fifthly and lastly, while there is a pattern pointing to some differences between the Nordic versus Baltic countries across results, overall, these are small, and there is also a diversity of differences between various countries in individual aspects.