Choosing organics: A path analysis of factors underlying the selection of organic food among Australian consumers

Path analysis of attitudinal, motivational, demographic and behavioural factors influencing food choice among Australian consumers who had consumed at least some organic food in the preceding 12 months showed that concern with the naturalness of food and the sensory and emotional experience of eating were the major determinants of increasing levels of organic consumption. Increasing consumption was also related to other 'green consumption' behaviours such as recycling and to lower levels of concern with convenience in the purchase and preparation of food. Most of these factors were, in turn, strongly affected by gender and the level of responsibility taken by respondents for food provisioning within their households, a responsibility dominated by women. Education had a slightly negative effect on the levels of concern for sensory and emotional appeal due to lower levels of education among women. Income, age, political and ecological values and willingness to pay a premium for safe and environmentally friendly foods all had extremely minor effects. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Educating Practitioners for Integrative Rural Practice

Arguably, living and working in rural communities can pose significant challenges for human service practitioners - challenges that are different from those encountered by their urban counterparts. Human services employers, like many other employers in rural areas, have difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. There is now considerable evidence to support the notion that rural and remote practice constitutes a different and distinct form of practice and has undergone significant changes over the past decade. Living and working in rural communities means that practitioners are not only influenced by the rural and remote context of practice, they are also part of that context. Given the difficulty encountered in attracting and retaining rural practitioners and the changes in this area, an important question which emerges is: How can practitioners best be prepared for this work through largely urban based social work and human service education? The multifaceted and multilayered complexities in rural practice requires creativity, improvisation and a capacity for 'integrative thinking' (Martinez-Brawley 2002). This paper discusses six elements of newer forms of rural and remote practice and how they might be most effectively addressed through social work and human service curricula. An education model which integrates these elements and other principles for rural practice is proposed.