Ecological situation and changes in food demand in the EU member states and selected OECD countries: Spatio-temporal analysis

Abstract

The ongoing process of globalization significantly affects the level of socio-economic development of countries and the progressing economic convergence. Along with the economic development of countries, changes in the level and structure of household consumption occur as a result of getting richer. The aim of the study is to analyze the unification of demand for food in households of the EU Member States and selected OECD countries in 1995–2019, with particular emphasis on spatial relationships. The study also addresses the issue of the relationship between changes in the level and structure of consumption of households with their ecological situation. This relationship is very important due to the assumptions about the idea of sustainable consumption. In the study of the equalization of the level of expenditure on food, the approach of β-absolute convergence and β-conditional convergence were applied. In the second approach, spatio-temporal convergence models were also estimated, taking into account the similarity of food expenditure, conditioned by the geographical location of territorial units. Moreover, the similarity of the ecological situation between analyzed countries was determined, which is the basis for the creation of an additional connection matrix, used in the estimation of spatio-temporal convergence models. The spatio-temporal analysis was based on spatial autoregressive model (SAR) and spatial error model (SE). This study confirms that in the analyzed countries in period of 1995–2019, there was an equalization of the level and share of household expenditure on food, related to the unification of consumption possibilities, determined by the convergence of disposable income.