Political Consumerism and Food Community Networks

Abstract

European society, with its steadily increased welfare levels, is not only concerned about food (safety, prices), but also on other aspects such as biodiversity loss, landscape degradation, pollution of water, soil and atmosphere. To a large extent these concerns can be translated into a wider concept named sustainable development defined as a normative concept by Morgan and Sonnino (2008). Sustainability in the food chain means, in other words, approaching a new emerging vision of a sustainable agro-food system introducing a prism, instead of a triangle, of sustainability (J. Spangerberg, 2002) in which an institutional dimension is also taken into account.Sustainability can be defined as a normative concept and, therefore, completely conditioned by the institutional settings in which is performed (Hagedorn, 2008). Institutions are key-factors in determining sustainable resources allocation in every human society. Key issue on consumers and sustainability address consumers ability to manage a complex amount of information, complex transactions and biased perception of risk. A new equitable economic development is taking place in the real world promoting a model of interconnected and participatory communities with individual autonomy and involvement as well as integrating environmental considerations into economic developments. The concept of sustainable development calls for compatible institutions for enhancing sustainability at the di erent levels of economic, social and environmental human activities. For all the above reasons, we believe that scope exists for looking inside the newest form of organization that are growing, and are observable, in the real world economics. Among di erent attempts to conjugate such concepts, there is one that is taking place in many Region of Italy. In the last years spontaneous aggregations of consumers are developing. They are named Equitable Purchase Group (EPG). In short, they are characterised by an economy, not necessarily local, ethical and equitable, where social and economic territorial relations tend to develop districts and networks. One of the main characteristics of a EPG is the 1 direct relations between small farms, mainly producing organic products, and their customers with a high content of participation and specialization. In this paper we go into EPGs in Sicily. In this southern region of Italy there are about 1,200 nucleus distributed in 32 EPG (a nucleus is a family partecipating at an EPG). The study means to tackle issues related to organizational frameworks, at farm and chain level, and to assess those elements that mark consumers choices and their customer satisfaction. A representative sample of EPG (about 300 nucleus) was directly interviewed by means of an ad hoc questionnaire. A multinomial logit model was also implemented to verify what variables better explain the reason of a (un)successful EPG.