Sustainable food consumption and the regret of consumers

Summary

The purpose of this study was to explore feelings of regret and guilt felt by individuals whose actual food purchase was not as sustainable as they wished. For consumers with a positive attitude towards sustainable food products, a lower purchase frequency was associated with higher levels of regret. For both the issues of organic and Fair Trade consumers report modest feelings of regret and guilt. Concerning regret, no differences were found between organic or Fair Trade foodstuff. In contrast, feelings of guilt were more associated with not buying enough Fair Trade than not buying enough organic. The moment consumers started to imagine how their purchase decisions would feel when looking back in the future, both feelings of regret and guilt increased. Finally, participants were, to a certain extent, open to outside help to increase their sustainable food consumption. However, conclusions about sustainable consumption were mainly based on the Fair Trade data, rather than organic consumption.