Crowd-pleasers or food fights? Exploring UK public support and objection to divisive policies that aim to reduce the environmental harm caused by the food system

Supervisors: Dr Hannah Forde, Dr Rachel Pechey, Dr Asha Kaur, Professor Peter Scarborough

Background

We are excited to advertise a fully funded DPhil position embedded in the THRIVING Food Futures research hub. The student would be part of the Sustainable Healthy Food Group (SHFG) in the Health Behaviours Team at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.

The SHFG conducts research on policies, interventions and scenarios to shift the population towards healthy, sustainable food environments. We are currently funded by the Wellcome Trust, NIHR and UKRI amongst others. We do not receive funding from the food industry.

The THRIVING Food Futures project is a five-year research programme funded by UKRI and NIHR and led by Professor Peter Scarborough. In brief, the programme aims to develop policy and research tools and then co-design and evaluate interventions aimed at reducing GHG emissions associated with diet. The overall purpose of the research programme is to identify practical policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions whilst maximising health co-benefits.

Project description

Effective food system governance is integral to addressing the extensive environmental harm caused by the food system. Such governance encompasses local, national or international policies, and the institutions and individuals responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating them. Food system governance often provokes strong responses from the diverse, non-homogenous public (‘publics’). Many food policies have been divisive, garnering enthusiastic support from some, but vocal opposition from others. Such views reflect individuals’ unique circumstances and vantage points, but they may also be informed by dominant public narratives (frames), in turn influenced by financial or ideological interests.

Democratic food governance effectively deals with differences of opinion, and is capable of representing such differences in resultant policies. Democracy (literally dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule' in Ancient Greek) is a system of government vested in the whole population. Democratic food governance may lead to less democratic malaise, better use of public resource, more satisfied publics, and thus sustained implementation and enforcement of policies that can achieve their intended effect.

Nonetheless, divergent views complicate the job of policymakers in democratic systems who are responsible for reflecting public opinion in the policies they enact. Such division can also prevent key underlying problems (e.g., existential threat to the climate), being addressed at sufficient pace. Policymakers and related stakeholders are forced to reckon with moral and ethical dilemmas: is it better to communicate upfront the potential benefits and harms of a divisive policy, or should a policymaker only communicate benefits for a policy that addresses key societal challenges? And how would adopting either approach influence the ultimate impact of a policy? Developing a greater understanding of divisive policies could support policymakers regularly faced with such dilemmas.

Various qualitative and quantitative methods have explored public support for a subset of pro-environmental food policies, and in some cases, how and why support varies by characteristics of the publics included. Some of these methods are designed to understand public support naturalistically (e.g., interviews), in responses to information (e.g., prompted online surveys or experiments), or that which is developed through debate (e.g., deliberative mini-publics). Whether and how these methods might be advanced to develop a richer understanding of divisive policies, which receive extremes of both public support and opposition, has not been explored to date.

Depending on the student’s interests, some of the research questions this DPhil may explore are:

1. How are divisive policies defined in the context of food?
2. Which pro-environmental food policies particularly divide opinion and why?
3. What features (e.g., form/function) of a divisive food policy are more/less likely to elicit support/opposition?
4. How and why could public support for divisive food policies change?

Research methods that could be used to answer these questions include:

(1) Defining divisive policies: The student could hold workshop(s) with members of academia, policy, and civil society to develop a shared definition of divisive food policies. The workshops would involve activities to unearth which characteristics of a sample of food policies have divided opinion, mapping these characteristics to pull out key underlying concepts, and then organising these concepts through discussion to create shared meaning. The final articulation of divisive policies would underpin the remainder of the project.

(2) Identifying divisive policies: Using the definition developed in (1), the student could develop and run systematic searches of textual sources (e.g., news and industry media) in the UK (e.g., via Factiva), to identify whether and how public discourse has conflicted surrounding key pro-environmental food policies. Analysis would involve charting the mechanisms underpinning each policy, narratives/frames in support and opposition of pro-environmental food policies, which stakeholders (e.g., think-tanks, NGOs) have influenced those narratives/frames, and their current policy cycle status (e.g., proposed, implemented, repealed).

 (3) Exploring which policy features elicit support or opposition from publics: The student could use results of (2) to define online experiment(s) (e.g., discrete choice experiments) with the UK population. The student would work with THRIVING’s community panel to define the sample included in the experiments, to ensure involvement from diverse publics. The experiments would aim to explore (a) which policy attributes (i.e., mechanisms, frames, stakeholder influence) are particularly influential in generating support and from whom, and conversely (b) which attributes are particularly influential in generating opposition and from whom, and then (c) whether certain policy attributes are more robust to opposing counter-arguments.

(4) Understanding how public support and opposition for potentially divisive policies is shaped and changed: The student could  explore how public opinion is changed by interviewing key actors who shape public debate surrounding food policies, namely: (a) journalists who report food policies, (b) those who facilitate relevant public debate (e.g., facilitators of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s National Food Conversations; The National Food Strategy), and (c) members of opposing advocacy organisations (e.g., SUSTAIN, food industry associations). The interview guide would be based on the findings of (1) – (3), and will explore motivations, strategies, and experiences of changing public opinion related to pro-environmental food policies. The interviews would be thematically analysed to develop a Theory of Changing (ToC) public support. The ToC would articulate the pathways through which public opinion may or may not be changed. The ToC might be used by policymakers seeking to make progress on divisive policies, or used by researchers to develop hypotheses that might be tested in future empirical work.

By the end of the DPhil, the student would be an expert on public opinion in the context of key issues preventing rapid and democratic transitions to healthy, sustainable food systems.

Preferred applicant background/skills: 

Applicants should hold a Masters in a related field (e.g., public health, sustainability, public policy), or have equivalent work experience.

Funding

Fees at Home level for 3 years, Overseas applicants welcome to apply but they will need to cover difference in fees. With an annual stipend of at least £23,000, and research costs up to a total of £10,000.