A screening tool for sustainability: a preliminary study on an Italian consumer sample

It is known that consumers’ quality perception and acceptability of a product is based both on the intrinsic properties and on the extrinsic characteristics, linked with label information (Fernqvist & Ekelund, 2014). In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing interest in these external characteristics, especially those sustainability-related. Furthermore, their effect on consumer acceptability is found to vary depending on consumer consciousness to the information given (Endrizzi et al., 2015). Here we present the results of a preliminary study, which aim to explore a screening tool able to segment consumers according to their attitudes towards sustainability in order to be used in testing acceptability of food products of animal origin. The 15-item Welsh screening tool for sustainability (Poortinga & Darnton, 2016), was conveniently translated in Italian and then submitted to 79 consumers who rated their degree of importance, agreement and concern on a 9-point scale depending on the response option expected by each statement. Few self-reported food behaviours were also included in the questionnaire to cover the food sustainability domain (not present in the Welsh questionnaire) in terms of food diet (omnivorous, flexitarian or vegetarian/vegan), the percentage of weekly food waste, and that of organic and zero food miles products weekly purchased. Willingness to pay more for an organic, attentive to animal welfare, environmental friendly or mountain pasture product was also recorded. A combined approach of hierarchical and k-means clustering analysis identified three consumer segments (Pragmatists 42%, Sustainability-oriented 39% and Unattached 19%) that relate differently to personal value dimensions, views on sustainability and sustainable living, perception on climate change and energy security, living place attachment, self-reported food behaviours and distinct gender composition. These preliminary results highlight that the associations between the screening tool and self-reported food-related behaviours support the validity of consumer segmentation for the Italian sample.