Contagious consumption : how workplaces promote their employees’ organic food consumption : the case of preschools in Lund

Sammanfattning: Given unsustainable food consumption patterns and current policies’ ineffectiveness to change them, new approaches are needed to promote sustainable food practices. In this thesis, I focus on the workplace as a leverage point for change. By studying the case of preschools in Lund with a mixed-methods approach that combines statistical and contextual analysis, I abductively develop a model of how the workplace influences its employees’ organic food purchases. My results indicate that preschools influence their employees through two mechanisms – social comparison and deliberation. These mechanisms are conditioned by the level of exposure to the topic at work, supportiveness of the social context, and economic situation. I conclude that social interaction at the workplace is an important driver for increased organic food consumption, and that sustainable consumption policies need to better include the relational dimension of behaviour to overcome the existing gap between science and society.