Recent Literature
Studies cited above were motivated by the increased organic agriculture sales in the last
decade. They focused on factors driving organic consumption such as ethics, moral norms and
attitudes. They did not consider the effect of income or food expenditures on this consumption
nor did they incorporate the different types of food regimes that could influence the necessity or
desire for organic foods. Honkanen et al. did consider the effect of religious motives. One could
interpret this factor as a food regime specification since many religions prohibit certain types of
food. However, religious values did not demonstrate a strong influence on the purchase of
organic foods (Honkanen et al. 2006). This finding begs more research to determine the effect of
different types of food regimes on food consumption behaviors and expenditures.
Another study conducted by Onyango et al. showed that the consumption of organic
foods was positively affected by naturalness, vegetarian-vegan labeling and production location.
This study did not account for a vegetarian diet being followed by the consumer, but rather the
labeling of foods as vegetarian-vegan and their effect on organic purchases (Onyango et al.
2009). On the other end of this argument, instead of evaluating the effects of different factors on
organic purchases, Lusk and Norwood focused their study on a vegetarian consumer. Their study
was motivated by the lack of economic research on vegetarianism. As this study was motivated
by the increased promotion of vegetarianism and lack of empirical work in the field, Lusk and
Norwood 2009 also felt that the literature was limited in this subject. “A search for the word
‘vegetarian’ in the database EconLit yielded only 5 peer-reviewed journal articles, and only one
of these explicitly attempted to investigate the economic effects of vegetarianism.” (Lusk and
Norwood. 2009, p. 111). The authors evaluated the differences between energy consumption of
animal protein production and plant based sources. As expected, they found that the production
cost of plant based protein was much lower than the cost of animal based protein. However, the
important thing to consider is the nature of the result. This cost was evaluated at the farm level
and as a consumer, many products undergo a processing stage. When food products are subject
to a type of transformation and processing procedure, these processes always entail more
economic activities which can cause increased pollution and thus decrease the overall
environmental friendliness of the product. They also evaluated the costs at a retail level and
found that the costs were still lower for commodity goods but much less pronounced. The
interesting part of this study was when the authors examined the importance of meat products
and the value attributed to meat by consumers. They showed that meat is actually the most
valued food source of Americans (Lusk and Norwood. 2009). Therefore, promoting the
vegetarian diet as an environmentally friendly diet would have to overcome the high value given
to the purchase and consumption of meat. The authors also claimed that the inclusion of meat
products in one’s diet increased their overall food costs. “Other studies have shown that,
consistent with our results, vegetarian diets reduce food costs.” (Lusk and Norwood. 2009,
p.114). This was a relatively minor section of their study. However, if vegetarian advocates
continue to promote the idea that meat production is inefficient and that converting to
vegetarianism would decrease farm pollution (Lusk and Norwood. 2009), then evaluating the
costs related to food expenditures under this type of diet merits considerable attention.