Half of the consumers would not buy potatoes with visual imperfections

Improving food sustainability and reducing food waste are among the top challenges for achieving global sustainable development. In particular, changes towards more sustainable consumption are of vital importance in creating a more sustainable world. To shed light on these issues, we analyze to what extent and how consumers? food preferences move towards more sustainable behavior. We assess the importance consumers attach to the following critical sustainable attributes of food related to food waste: (i) ?Visual imperfections?, (ii) ?washed/unwashed?, (iii) ?size?, (iv) ?locally produced?, and (v) ?price?. We hypothesize that consumer preferences for these attributes are heterogeneous. Therefore, we segmented consumers into homogenous groups according to preferences for these sustainability attributes. To do this, we employed a direct ranking preference method using data gathered in an experiment conducted with consumers living in a mid-sized town in the northeast of Spain in 2018. The results suggest a high degree of consumer heterogeneity, and we identified four clusters according to the importance consumers attach to these attributes. The results are encouraging for the promotion of sustainability because different groups of consumers might prefer to purchase food products with different sustainable characteristics, such as locally grown, foods with visual imperfections, and minimally processed foods. ConclusionsThis paper analyzed consumers? preferences for local, suboptimal, and washed/unwashed fresh potatoes. In particular, the importance consumers attached to key sustainable attributes, such as (i) ?visual imperfections?, (ii) ?washed/unwashed?, (iii) ?size?, (iv) ?locally produced?, and (v) ?price? were assessed. Heterogeneity in consumer?s preferences for these attributes was hypothesized.The findings indicated that for the aggregate consumer, the five attributes were roughly equally important. However, heterogeneity in consumer preferences for the attributes was detected, and four clusters were identified according to the importance consumers attached across attributes. Each of the clusters consisted of roughly one-fourth of the consumers in the sample and were named according to their preferences for the attributes as ?price sensitive?, ?locavore?, ?external appearance lovers?, and ?visual imperfection takers?.Although we found certain differences across groups of consumers in terms of sociodemographic characteristics and purchase and consumption habits, they were not enough to provide any definitive profiling. This is one of the shortcomings of our paper. Further, we did not ask questions related to consumers? perceptions of environmental impacts and food waste of food systems. Another limitation is that the study considered only one product in only one specific area (province -NUTS3) in one European country (Spain). In addition, although we have provided some insights into consumers? acceptance of local, suboptimal, and less processed (unwashed) foods based on consumer preferences for particular attributes, we cannot provide monetary valuations of such attributes for consumers. This limitation constitutes a topic for future research: To measure consumer preferences for the most important attributes and to estimate their willingness to pay for them. Moreover, the small sample size is a limitation that need to be highlighted.Our results are promising in terms of sustainability and food waste reduction implications in the case of fresh potatoes, the product with the highest food waste in the food chain. Only one-fourth of consumers might not accept local, suboptimal, or unwashed potatoes. In addition, this group of consumers attached the least importance to price, and therefore, they might not accept those products even at lower prices. We also found that half of consumers would buy local potatoes because they gave high importance to this attribute. Half of these consumers would also buy the potatoes unwashed but not suboptimal (visual imperfections), and the other half would purchase suboptimal potatoes with visual imperfections but washed. One-fourth of consumers might accept suboptimal potatoes because visual imperfections was the least important potato characteristic. However, another one-fourth might purchase them at price discounts because they gave some importance to the visual imperfections, but this importance is almost half of the importance they attached to the price.SourceFood Sustainability and Waste Reduction in Spain: Consumer Preferences for Local, Suboptimal, And/Or Unwashed Fresh Food ProductsAzucena Gracia 1,2 and Miguel I. G?mez 31 Unidad de Econom?a Agroalimentaria y de los Recursos Naturales, Centro de Investigaci?n y Tecnolog?a Agroalimentaria de Arag?n (CITA), 50059 Zaragoza, Spain2?Instituto Agroalimentario de Arag?n (CITA- Universidad de Zaragoza), 50059 Zaragoza, Spain3?Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USASustainability 2020, 12(10), 4148https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4148/hthttps://doi.org/10.3390/su12104148?Picture,?TOMRA 5B, the machine that takes optical sorting to a higher level