Skalkos, D.; Kalyva, Z.C.; Kosma, I.S. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students’ Food Choice Motives in Greece. Sustainability2023, 15, 9865.
Skalkos, D.; Kalyva, Z.C.; Kosma, I.S. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students’ Food Choice Motives in Greece. Sustainability 2023, 15, 9865.
Skalkos, D.; Kalyva, Z.C.; Kosma, I.S. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students’ Food Choice Motives in Greece. Sustainability2023, 15, 9865.
Skalkos, D.; Kalyva, Z.C.; Kosma, I.S. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students’ Food Choice Motives in Greece. Sustainability 2023, 15, 9865.
Abstract
We are already more than year away from the pandemic period, followed by a year within a global economic crisis and a war in Ukraine, with the marks and the changes caused in all parameters of life becoming clear now including food choice motives of citizens worldwide. In this study we investigate the changes in food choice motives caused by the pandemic to college students in Greece in the 10 key food motives namely health, convenience, sensory, appeal, nutritional quality, moral concerns, weight control, mood and stress, familiarity, price, and shopping frequency and behavior. A self-response questionnaire survey was carried out in January to February 2023 on a sample of 1017 college students’ participants through the Google platform. Basic statistical tools, combined with cross and Chi-square tests were used in order to analyze the collected data. The results show that students exhibit quiet and very important preferences on health, convenience, weight control, and mood and stress. Food choices related to sensory appeal, nutritional quality, and familiarity is of less importance for the students, similarly to ethical concerns expect the environmental impact of the food which is high to their concern. The motive which continues to have the highest concern for students before and after the pandemic is price looking for value for money food (88.8%), not to be expensive (80.7%), and be cheap (78.7%). The shopping frequency and behavior motives, which were changed during the pandemic, have now returned to the motives of the pre pandemic period, with purchase of foods from supermarket (29%), local grocery (37.6%), and only 12.3% via online, and 20.4% by delivery, weekly or every two weeks. They prefer to cook at home full meals is now very high reaching 74.4%, avoiding eating at a restaurant or fast food (only 27% positives answers). Our findings indicate that students have already returned to their food choice motives of the period before COVID-19 except the home cooking food which is now high in their preference.
Keywords
Food Choice Motives (FCM); food insecurity (FI); food security (FS); college students
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Marketing
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
