Consumer behaviour in Italy. Who spends more to buy Mediterranean diet?

Mediterranean diet is a term used to describe the traditional eating habits of people\r\naround the Mediterranean and that refers to a healthy eating model, with significant\r\nnutrition and health benefits. However, many studies have emphasised an\r\nincreasing erosion of the Mediterranean diet heritage, also in Italy. Starting from\r\nthe assumption that evolution of human nutrition, if it occurs rapidly, can only be\r\nconceptualised as a social phenomenon, this study intends to explore the relationship\r\nbetween purchase behaviour for typical Mediterranean diet food and some socioeconomic\r\nand geographic characteristics of the Italian households.\r\nItaly’s food purchase microdata in 2013 were used to describe three different purchasing\r\nbehaviours among households and a multinomial logit model was applied to\r\nmodel nominal outcome variables in relationship with socioeconomic variables. Results\r\nsuggest that families with older and more educated respondents have a higher\r\nprobability to purchase Mediterranean diet food, while spending more on out-of-home\r\neating or living far away from an urban area, seems to reduce this probability.