Household food choices

Despite the large potential of dietary shifts to mitigate climate change and other environmental impacts, achieving such shifts is complex, as household food choices carry cultural and personal significance. This paper identifies the role and relative importance of a number of determinants of households’ food consumption choices using data from OECD’s 2022 survey on Environmental Policies and Individual Behaviour Change (EPIC). The survey covers nine OECD countries and takes stock of a range of household choices with respect to food consumption, including their diet composition and the characteristics of the food products they purchase. Econometric analyses examine the roles of income, environmental attitudes, household characteristics and preferences towards different policy options on household choices. Based on these insights the paper provides a number of policy considerations for encouraging households to make more sustainable choices with respect to food consumption.