What is local and for what foods does it matter?

Abstract

This study answers two important questions related to local food that have not been sufficiently addressed before: what is the greatest distance food can travel and still be accepted by consumers as local, and is "local" an equally important product attribute across food categories. Using survey data from two states in the USA, this research found that consumers' accepted food travel distance may be much shorter than what is generally believed. In addition, there exists a great variation in the importance consumers attach to "being local" for different food categories and these differences can be related to variations in consumer demographics.

Keywords

• distance
• food category
• importance rating
• local
• regression