Consumers attitudes towards regional food products: a comparison between five different european countries

This paper reports the results of a comparative analysis of the main explanatory factors of consumer behaviour relating to regional quality products in five EU countries. Bayesian Network Technology was used to process data collected in the consumer task of the RIPPLE programme. Consumer's country of origin was shown to be the main factor of difference between the study countries. But the distinction between consumers from the North and those from the South of Europe does not appear so evident, and rather than a marked typology, the analysis suggests a set of indistinct groups partly overlapping. The analysis also shows that consumers' knowledge, perception and attitude are as important in explaining behaviour patterns as the socio-demographic factors. Moreover, these four groups of factors strongly interact to influence consumer behaviour.