**Abstract**

The COVID-19 pandemic, unlike the 2007–2008 financial crisis, was a supply side shock, now sharply exacerbated by the Ukrainian war. Drawing on relevant sources, this chapter illustrates the resulting impacts on changes in consumers' food behaviour during the first wave of the pandemic, based on a large sample of households from 12 countries spread across Europe. Unlike most previous studies, this analysis takes place at European level revealing large scale general trends. Findings show that the food system, like many other strategic consumer markets, has experienced shortages, panic-buying, hoarding and a focus on products both with longer shelf-lives and that help to reduce stress. However, there have been wildly different outcomes related to socio-demographics, household income and location. As a result, and supported by digital technologies, new spatial dynamics and relationships are emerging that exemplify important lessons for all food system actors, in particular significant shifts towards more local-regional production and supply. This is accompanied by much greater consumer awareness of the importance of food and involvement in its preparation, mediated through geography and the socio-demographic characteristics of household consumption. A strong driver is the increasingly local orientation of work and business transformed by a resurgence of hybrid working.

**Keywords:** system disruption, consumer behaviour, food systems, socio-demographics, spatial change, digital technology, hybrid working

### **1. Introduction**

## **1.1 COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine: Economic contraction, a less globalized world and the environmental crisis**

In contrast to the 2007–2008 financial crisis characterized by a massive demand slump due to dramatically reduced consumer spending power, COVID-19 hitting Europe in early 2020 has caused a severe supply-side recession. This is itself being turbo-charged by the invasion of Ukraine during 2022, depositing a thick layer of

geo-political tectonic change on top. Underlying all this is the 'mother-of-all' crises that sees our natural environment stretched to near collapse, thereby putting the very survival of our species in peril. All this has disrupted both global and local supply chains as much of the workforce becomes used to virtual, remote and hybrid working, limitations on the movement of people and goods with transport and logistics put under severe pressure, at the same time as demand for many goods and services mushrooms.

The economic contraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021 left a heavy health and human toll, shrank the Eurozone economy by a record 12.1% and wiped out more than a decade of expansion during the largest economic shock the world has experienced in decades [1]. A further sharp tightening of the economic screw began in early 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) drastically downgraded its growth forecasts, predicting further global economic fragmentation, rising debt and social unrest [2]. The World Bank stated a "human catastrophe loomed" with an estimated unprecedented 37% rise in food prices, caused by war-related disruption to supplies, pushing millions into poverty, increasing malnutrition, and reducing funding for education and healthcare for the least well-off [3]. By April 2022, more than five million people had fled Ukraine in 2 months, with more likely to follow, exacerbating an international migration emergency that extends from Afghanistan to the Sahel [4]. In drought-hit east Africa, the World Food Programme says 20 million people face starvation during 2022. The war in Ukraine did not create the drought, but the UN warns it could hurt efforts to reduce global heating, thereby triggering further displacement and forced migration [5].

#### **1.2 The new age of disruption: the move towards localization, strategic autonomy and resilience**

It is clear that the twenty-first century has ushered in a new age of more or less continuous crisis and disruption and that these are not times for business-as-usual. There is a need to rethink many of our shibboleths, including around sustainable development and resilience, how we re-structure our economies and politics, as well as how we work, play and live on the earth's surface. These are huge changes, intimately inter-related, in which digital technology clearly plays an essential role. It enables people and organisations to work and operate locally whilst connecting globally on a huge scale, but also has downsides that threaten the spread of misinformation.

The deep recessions triggered by these shocks continue to leave lasting scars due to lower investment, an erosion of human capital through lost work and schooling, and the fragmentation of global trade and supply linkages. A longer-term re-evaluation of global value-chains and markets is taking place as the world moves beyond the decades-long period of massive globalization prior to 2020 towards significant deglobalization today. In the context of its 'Great Re-set', the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020 saw 'shifting tectonic plates' towards three main spheres of influence (the US, China and the EU), not necessarily leading to isolationism, but certainly entailing some shifts in economic and political power [6]. In the same year, the WEF looked forward to what the post COVID-19 world could look like [7]:

• "Governments will be much more involved in industry. This will especially be the case in critical infrastructure sectors such as utilities, travel, healthcare and food, and will mean increased regulation."

*The Geo-Demographics of European Consumers' Food Behaviour in the New Age of Disruption DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106938*


Since 2020, there has already been significant new onshoring of economic activity and employment with some re-focus back to more domestic markets in new forms of re-localization, also down to regional and city levels. However, the importance of retaining openness, connectivity and cooperation at all levels, including globally, is still recognized. This is likely to be seen especially in relation to 'strategic' manufactured goods, including in food, health and other vital goods, as well as in critical utilities and infrastructures like energy and water. This will increase focus on more domestic and regional sources in order to diversity supply towards greater resilience at times of future shock.

In response to these developments, and to complement the goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent through its European Green Deal [8], in June 2020 the EU published a review of its trade and investment policy that examined the challenges it will face and how to promote its values and standards [9]. This assesses both how trade policy can contribute to a swift and sustainable socio-economic recovery that helps promote competitiveness in the post-COVID-19 environment, as well as to see how it can assist in building a stronger EU based on the model of 'Open Strategic Autonomy'. This will enable the EU as a bloc to become much more self-sufficient in strategic goods and services, like critical food and health products and strategic industrial goods like micro-chips and batteries. It is also seen as a way of deploying trade policy to reap the benefits of openness for EU businesses, workers and consumers, while protecting them from unfair practices and building up EU resilience to better face future challenges.

#### **1.3 The impact of COVID-19 on European food behaviour**

The impact of Covid-19 on European food systems and consumer behaviour has already been subject to several studies, including a household survey covering Denmark, Germany and Slovenia [10]. This showed that. During the first wave of Covid-19, between 15 and 42% of households changed their patterns of food consumption in response to the closure of physical places to eat away from home, mobility restrictions leading to reduced shopping frequency, the perceived health risks of Covid-19, pandemic-induced income losses, and socio-demographic factors including household composition. A German study showed that Covid-19 had a significant impact on consumers' eating habits leading to negative health consequences, especially amongst economically vulnerable groups. The purchase of ready meals and canned food increased, including the consumption of alcohol and confectionery, at the same time as there was a decrease in the consumption of high-quality and more expensive food like vegetables and fruit [11]. Many households lost income during the pandemic and became more likely to grow their own food and to obtain free food in food banks [12]. During 2020, compared to 2019, European food banks redistributed significantly

more food despite numerous social restrictions and other challenges associated with the pandemic [13].

On top of these experiences, the 2022 Ukrainian war saw sharp reductions in exports of energy, food products and artificial fertilisers from both Ukraine and Russia, leading to additional strong calls to move decisively to agricultural independence and increased EU food security. President Macron of France is calling for increased food production and quality, whilst recognising there are challenges of food availability and prices that impact Europe's poorest, as part of a new strategy for "agricultural, industrial and creative independence" [14].

## **2. Methodology**

#### **2.1 Population size and sample**

The evidence presented in this chapter is drawn from an empirical study supplemented by an examination of extant sources that have relevance for changes in European consumers' food behaviour during the new age of disruption. **Table 1** shows the samples collected by a quantitative household survey at the start of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March to July 2020) via national researchers in each of 12 countries spread across Europe using a standard questionnaire.

A survey at this time was deemed ideal given both that the lockdowns and restrictions were implemented very rapidly during March 2020, thus capturing the real time effects of the shock, and because respondents were more likely to remember their very recent food behaviour before the pandemic and make realistic comparisons with their actual behaviour during the pandemic. Rather than attempting to elicit data on difficult to assess absolute levels of food behaviour, the purpose was to capture the


#### **Table 1.**

*Sample of 12 European countries.*

#### *The Geo-Demographics of European Consumers' Food Behaviour in the New Age of Disruption DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106938*

relative changes in household behaviour during COVID-19 compared to before the pandemic concerning food provision, preparation and consumption, as well as experiences of pandemic-related illness, regulations and closures. Ancillary information was also collected on household socio-demographics and household location.

Two approaches were used in sampling respondents: market research agency designed quotas using representative gender, age, education and regional distributions; and convenience sampling through social media targeted by the national researchers at all the main population groups in all parts of the country. The potential limitations of this mixed strategy was made necessary because the network of national researchers needed to be established rapidly as the first wave struck, so not all of them were able to quickly secure sufficient funding for representative sampling and data collection by market research agencies. In some countries, such agencies were hired but funding was restricted so the quota sampling and data collection were accompanied by convenience self-selection of respondents to boost the sample. However, most other surveys taken at this time were based only on convenience samples with data analysed at country level so that sample sizes were relatively small. In contrast, this survey's data analysis takes place at the European rather than the national scale thereby ensuring that each variable has relatively large samples with adequate variance so that any bias is kept to a minimum and can justify significant statistical analysis.

In Section 3 of this chapter, some relevant findings arising from a new analysis of the survey data is presented: pandemic-induced changes in food consumption, how food is obtained and prepared, food vulnerability in terms of the use of free food sources and food stress related to anxiety, missed meals and stocking-up food. For each of these topics, the influence of, first, socio-demographic and, second, geographic variables is explored as possible predictors of the food behaviour changes seen. How these variables are defined and constructed is summarised in sub-sections 2.2 and 2.3 below.

#### **2.2 Socio-demographic analysis**

Drawing on [15], three of the four most consistently powerful predictors of food behaviour change are the following three socio-demographic variables:

	- households with children aged 0–<sup>19</sup>
	- single person households
	- households with 2 or more adults and no children.

◦ lower secondary: the first stage of secondary education building on primary education and marking the end of compulsory education in Europe

◦ upper secondary: the second/final stage of secondary education preparing for tertiary education and/or providing skills relevant to employment

◦ university: tertiary degree-level education

	- Income loss during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic
	- No-income-loss during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.
