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Abstract
As a novel contribution, this paper explores the possible association between individual risk attitudes and consumer fruit and vegetable (FV) intake. Inspired by the literature, the study also investigates the relationship between FV consumption frequency and health consciousness, perceived health benefits, trust, and attitude towards eating the recommended five-a-day FV portions. An ordered logit model is estimated on data collected through direct interviews among university students. The results show that risk aversion has a positive effect on consumer choice to eat the recommended number of FV servings, similar to the individual health consciousness and the perception of health benefits. The results pave the way for new research that aims to provide useful evidence for the implementation of new strategies to foster people’s FV intake in compliance with the five-a-day recommendation.
Highlights
Healthy eating has attracted great public attention in recent years; it is essential for promoting healthy living and for reducing many pathologies (Shepherd et al 2006)
Except for risk attitude, it is worth noting that this research builds on the literature with respect to the factors that we considered as independent variables: in particular, the works of Lusk and Coble (2005) and Mazzocchi et al (2008) inspired the selection of the items for health benefits (HEAL) and TRU, respectively, while the items for Health consciousness (HC) and ATT were derived from Squires et al (2001) and Carfora et al (2016) with adjustments, respectively
The majority of the sample (47%) consumes one to two portions of fruit and vegetable (FV) every day, followed by three to four portions (43%) and five servings (7%), while a minority (3%) reports null consumption on a weekly basis. This evidence is in agreement with recent statistics from IMH (2019) that relate to Italian consumers, showing that the majority consume one FV portion per day (20%) and between two to four FV portions per day (75%), whereas only a minority (5%) consume at least 5 daily portions
Summary
Healthy eating has attracted great public attention in recent years; it is essential for promoting healthy living and for reducing many pathologies (Shepherd et al 2006). Italians are reported to eat less than the recommended daily intake: in 2017, FV consumption (between two and four a day) was widely below the benchmark of five portions, and approximately 83% of the 3-year-old and over population claimed to consume one portion per day (IMH 2019). To our knowledge, the interplay of high FV consumption (i.e., consuming the recommended FV amount per day) with the individual perception of health benefits that derive from this (i.e., intended as the prevention of some diseases or health risk reduction) is poorly understood, deserving additional investigations as in this study (that is, if the perception of health benefits has a positive impact on FV consumption, diet-related health education efforts should stress the need to eat five FV servings per day)
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