The ethics of eating: how do lifestyle politics shape tourists’ ethical food consumption behaviours?
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Date
2025-12-12
Open Access Location
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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
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(c) 2025 The Author/s
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Purpose: Guided by the lifestyle politics theory, this study aims to examine how ethical food commitments are negotiated and reshaped within tourism experiences. It explores how travel settings affect political food consumerism by disrupting familiar routines, introducing new cultural and logistical constraints and leading individuals to adjust their food choices in ways that reflect ongoing ethical engagement.
Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a constructivist ontology and interpretivist epistemology, the study uses a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews with politically and ethically conscious consumers. The analysis, informed by the grounded theory, identifies key themes related to motivations, emotional dimensions and barriers in travel-related political and ethical food consumption.
Findings: Tourism disrupts the routines that political food consumerism usually relies on. In everyday life, ethical food choices are supported by habit, familiar products and like-minded social settings. But when people travel, they face new cultures and lose control over what food is available. From a lifestyle politics perspective, ethical choices are not fixed – they shift as situations change. In tourism, political food decisions often involve compromise, shaped by practical limits, cultural differences and being more visible. Tourism, therefore, functions as a space for ethical expression and as a context in which political food commitments are tested and redefined.
Practical implications: Understanding how ethical food commitments shift during travel can help providers better support value-driven consumption. This includes improving access to verified ethical food options, clearer sourcing information and recognising the cultural and emotional significance of food choices for ethically motivated travellers. By addressing the challenges faced in unfamiliar settings, industry actors can create more inclusive environments that align with expectations around ethical and sustainable consumption.
Originality/value: A lifestyle politics perspective is applied to political food consumerism in tourism, highlighting food as a highly moralised and contested area of consumption. It offers new insight into how ethical eating practices are shaped through travel and how these practices may contribute to sustainability transitions within tourism and hospitality.
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Citation
Seyfi S, Orea-Giner A, Hall CM, Zaman M. (2025). The ethics of eating: how do lifestyle politics shape tourists’ ethical food consumption behaviours?. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 37. 13. (pp. 103-122).