Food as Ideology: Measurement and Validation of Locavorism

This research conceptualizes preferences for local foods (i.e., locavorism) as an emergent consumer ideology and develops a multidimensional scale to measure it. Prior socioeconomics and psychology research has uncovered correlates of local food preferences and offered some possible theoretical explanations. By synthesizing and expanding these past findings and perspectives, this research presents a tripartite framework for understanding locavorism in terms of three core belief dimensions: lionization of local foods, opposition to long-distance food systems, and communalization of food economies. Six studies provide support for this L-O-C framework and its validity. Survey, experimental, and field evidence demonstrate the scale's structure, as well as its discriminant, predictive, nomological, and known-group validity. In addition to choice and preference for local foods, the scale predicts evangelism and meaningfulness related to food advertisements. Altogether, this work provides a grounded view of locavorism, together with a measurement tool that food marketers may apply in practice.