Gen Z and Sustainable Diets: A Holistic Perspective. Understanding Perceptions of and Engagement with the Social, Economic and Environmental Dimensions of a Sustainable Diet
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Current food production methods are causing wide scale degradation of the natural environment thus a shift towards more sustainable agricultural systems is essential in fighting the climate crisis. Understanding how Gen Z, a generation that will inherit the changing climate, relates to the social, economic and environmental aspects of a sustainable diet is important in ensuring they are aware how to make an impact with their dietary choices. This thesis aimed to gain a holistic understanding of Gen Z's perceptions of and engagement with sustainable diets. Two studies were conducted online, examining Canadian youth between the ages of 18-25. The first study took an exploratory approach, aiming to understand what a sustainable diet means to Gen Z in their own words. The second study took a predictive approach, aiming to quantify and understand Gen Z's action stages around a range of sustainable dietary behaviours, including the psychological and educational factors that influence their stage of change. Results from Study One highlighted that youth perceive behaviours centered around supporting their local community and reducing food waste to be effective for promoting a sustainable diet. In addition, over 60% of participants indicated that there were barriers preventing them from engaging in sustainable diets, such as cost. Results from Study Two revealed that a high food literacy score and a strong belief in the efficacy of a behaviour are the two most important predictors of being in an action stage for a range of sustainable dietary behaviours. Together these two studies provide a holistic overview of what sustainable diets mean to Gen Z, how they currently engage with sustainable diets, and ways to encourage action. The thesis also contributes to the scholarly literature on the use of TTM and TPB in assessing the factors that influence engagement with sustainable dietary behaviours. It also offers practical recommendations on how our results can be used to shape policy, educational interventions and marketing towards Gen Z.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".