Sustainable Food Consumption A Question of Social Differentiation?

Sustainable food consumption represents a core element in addressing the climate crisis; accordingly, the current sustainability movement is accompanied by a broad supply and increasing demand for organic and fair trade products. Sociologically, the central question is whether these developments represent the diffusion of new sustainable consumption patterns among broad segments of the population or whether they reflect different lifestyle-related consumption trends that run along social lines of differentiation. Following Bourdieu's concept, we construct a social space of sustainable food consumption using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) building on a survey of nutritional and consumption behaviors conducted in Hamburg in 2018. Based on 1153 respondents and their information on purchasing and dietary practices, their attitudes toward sustainability in general and towards sustainable food purchasing, as well as their socio-demographic characteristics, a social landscape of sustainable food consumption emerges, revealing which aspects of ecological and socio-economic sustainability are common or less common for different subpopulations. This paper illustrates that sustainability-conscious nutritional behavior linked to explicitly ecological and socio-economic motives and attitudes continues to be differentiated in particular by education and occupation, while income plays a role as a differentiating characteristic only in the extreme endpoints. However, we also find a subpopulation which is particularly sustainable in their actions and attitudes, which is characterized neither by horizontal nor by vertical stratification variables.