Exploring Consumer Motivations for Purchasing Local Food—Evidence from a National Survey

The paper explores to what extent individual beliefs of lionization, opposition, and communalization (Reich, Beck, Price, 2018), lead them to consume local foods over conventional ones once one has controlled for individuals’ socio-economic features. To this extent, the study uses the L(ionization)-O(pposition)-C(ommunalization) framework (Reich et al., 2018), measured via 11 multiscale items, and individual data collected across all Italian regions including respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics. The analysis uses a large representative sample of individual food shoppers (n = 1800) and data were analyzed using a logistic regression. Results show that individual socio-economics characteristics affect consumer decisions to purchase local foods. Highly educated and high-income consumers record a higher probability to purchase local food products. Estimated results suggest that constructs capturing Lionization Opposition Communalization beliefs positively affect consumer decisions to purchase local food products, although to a different extent. In detail, estimates pointed out that consumers’ willingness to support their community via local food purchases was the main motivation underlying their local food purchase, followed by the consumer opposition to long-distance food systems, and lastly, their belief that local foods (vs. non-local) possess superior taste and quality.