What image for ethical food?

Considering the increasing importance assumed by ethical food within academic debate, this paper aims to offer a model for measuring its image that reflects the influence of different ethical food image qualities, and to provide the first exploratory application of this model in an Italian context. Despite the importance of the topic, there is a lack of research specifically on the image of ethical food. A measurement instrument was developed for the model, containing a number of different dimensions, and was tested in survey format on a sample of 195 Italian respondents. The results show that ethical food image is made up of five dimensions: sustainability of ethical food, food attributes, food uniqueness, psychological characteristics, and holistic characteristics. This framework can be applied in the future to further food image research and to related sectors.