DynAPol - Dynamiques des consommations Alimentaires et Politiques de durabilité

Abstract

The transition to sustainable food systems is a critical public policy issue, given the external costs and health and environmental impacts of food consumption. Sustainable diets have been identified in scientific literature but are far from the food preferences currently revealed by consumer choices. They would require major substitutions between and within product categories (Willett et al., 2019). This mismatch is due in particular to ingrained and persistent dietary habits and socio-cultural norms, constraints arising from supply characteristics (accessibility, price and quality of products), and competition between the uses of time in daily life (work, transport, leisure, etc.). These preferences, and issues of social inequalities, make the acceptance of sustainable food policies notoriously difficult. Quantitative studies of public policy have so far paid little attention to the potential role of food preferences in transitions. Therefore, the DynAPol project will combine economic and sociological analyses to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of household food preferences and consumption and their interactions with the evolution of the structure of the population, the characteristics of food supply, and public policies. The project will consist of four parts. The first part will describe the dynamics of food consumption and its environmental and nutritional quality using longitudinal purchase data from the representative Kantar WorldPanel (2002-2019). Household profiles will be identified based on discrepancies between stated preferences for healthy and sustainable food and preferences revealed by purchases. In the second part, we will examine the specific contributions of three types of factors to these consumption and preference dynamics: the socio-demographic structure of the population, time and budget constraints, and supply characteristics. We will also use the COVID-19 and 2022 inflation shocks to reveal the tensions between preferences and constraints in consumer trade-offs, and the changes in stated preferences induced by these trade-offs. These analyses will be based on the 2020-2023 Kantar WorldPanel data, harmonised with the previous series. The third part will analyse public policies, considering that preferences are heterogeneous and changing according to consumer profiles and previously identified dynamics. We will combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to better understand the interactions between public and private actors and their role in formulating and disseminating norms and standards of sustainability, and to better measure the impact of policies when preferences and food supply evolve simultaneously. In the fourth part, we will use our results to identify supply-side regulatory policies that can steer consumers towards sustainable diets, with a focus on reducing social inequalities and minimising the welfare costs by changing preferences. The project will shed light on food system transformation strategies through two innovative contributions. First, in contrast to the existing literature, we will develop economic evaluations of public policies by incorporating the possibility of changes in preferences calibrated from the dynamics observed over the last two decades. Second, by combining sociological and economic approaches, we will contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between preference dynamics, public and private stakeholders and supply-side regulatory policies.

Project: 2024 - 60 months

Contact in TSE: Céline BONNET