Title: What image for ethical food?

Authors: Martin Grimmer; Milena Viassone

Addresses: Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 84 Hobart Tasmania 7001, Australia ' Department of Management, University of Turin (Cuneo Branch), C.so Unione Sovietica, 218/bis – 10134, Turin, Italy

Abstract: Considering the increasing importance assumed by ethical food within academic debate, this paper aims to offer a model for measuring its image that reflects the influence of different ethical food image qualities, and to provide the first exploratory application of this model in an Italian context. Despite the importance of the topic, there is a lack of research specifically on the image of ethical food. A measurement instrument was developed for the model, containing a number of different dimensions, and was tested in survey format on a sample of 195 Italian respondents. The results show that ethical food image is made up of five dimensions: sustainability of ethical food, food attributes, food uniqueness, psychological characteristics, and holistic characteristics. This framework can be applied in the future to further food image research and to related sectors.

Keywords: measurement; ethical food; ethical food image; ethical products; tourist destinations; Likert scale; sustainability; Italian context; attributes; food uniqueness; psychological characteristics; holistic characteristics.

DOI: 10.1504/WREMSD.2017.086302

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 2017 Vol.13 No.5/6, pp.542 - 559

Received: 10 Dec 2015
Accepted: 10 Feb 2016
Published online: 04 Sep 2017 *

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