Health Attitudes, Environmental Attitudes and Vegetable Consumption

Abstract

According to World Health Organization a diet high in vegetables may reduce the risk of coronary heart diseases, stroke, and certain types of cancer. In addition, vegetables have lower carbon footprints than most other foods. But what is the most important motivation to consume vegetables? Is it health or is it climate and the environment? The main objective in this paper is to find drivers behind vegetable consumption, with emphasis on health and environmental motivation. To analyze the connection between individual's attitudes towards the climate, environment and health and the frequency of vegetable consumption we used survey data from 2015. The individual attitudes are hidden but through questions regarding perceptions and behavior the attitudes may be retrieved. We constructed latent variables to represent measures of environment and health attitudes. These latent variables were included in an econometric model linking attitudes with frequency of vegetable consumption. We applied the model to test for differences in frequencies of vegetable consumption for individuals with little and high degree of environmental and health consciousness. The main results show that health is a stronger motivator for vegetable consumption than environmental consciousness.