<p>Promoting
sustainable consumption is critical to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable
Development Goals. Food systems can cause considerable environmental impacts,
which are exacerbated by the rapidly increasing global population and
urbanization. Policy makers are seeking strategies to promote sustainable food consumption
to reduce food-related environmental footprints. However, literature assessing
environmental implications of food consumption has several gaps: first, studies
using national average diets or one-day dietary recall data are likely to
neglect the heterogeneous food purchasing patterns in different households and over
longer time spans; second, few studies have considered reducing the overall
food-emissions-water-land (FEWL) impacts and the FEWL impact reduction
potentials have not been fully examined due to lack of considering changing
consumption patterns of food items within food groups.
Additionally, knowing the environmental impacts of food consumption is only the
first step towards sustainable consumption. Providing the information to
consumers to guide their decision making is also critical. Ecolabels are
increasingly used to inform consumers about the environmental performance of
products. However, the effectiveness of ecolabels is unclear because methods
used in existing studies may not show consumers’ naturalistic behavior.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This dissertation aims to address these research gaps to
provide better understanding of the reduction potentials and trade-offs of food
environmental impacts, and the effectiveness of ecolabels to facilitate consumer
decision making for sustainable consumption. To achieve the objective, a
variety of models and methods are used: (1) detailed food purchasing records
from 57,578 U.S. households were analyzed and a process-based life cycle
assessment (LCA) model is developed to evaluate the food carbon emissions and
identify reduction pathways; (2) the LCA model was then expanded to also quantify
food-related blue water footprint and land footprint. The FEWL impact reduction
potentials were evaluated in two dietary change scenarios: (a) only adjusting intake in each food group
to the recommended amount and (b) in addition to adjusting food group intake
amount, changing consumption patterns to shift towards the food item that
minimizes the overall FEWL impacts within each group). A food-item level
analysis was also conducted to examine the
FEWL impact trade-offs associated with food item substitutions; and (3) survey and attention data were collected
from 156 participants in a naturalistic shopping environment using eye tracking
glasses to evaluate the effectiveness of ecolabels on informing consumers’ product
selection for sustainable consumption. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>By
assessing the environmental impacts of food consumption and the effectiveness
of ecolabels, this dissertation proposed pathways to reduce food-related
environmental impacts (i.e., through identifying target households and food
groups for impact reduction) and strategies to improve ecolabels’ effectiveness
in consumers’ decision making. The results can provide insights to policy
makers to promote sustainable consumption.
</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/19341617 |
| Date | 10 March 2022 |
| Creators | Li Song (12225953) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/TOWARDS_SUSTAINABLE_CONSUMPTION_ASSESSING_THE_ENVIRONMENTAL_IMPACTS_OF_FOOD_CONSUMPTION_AND_THE_EFFECTIVENESS_OF_ECOLABELS/19341617 |
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