Citation: Vasco, C.; Salazar, D.; Cepeda, D.; Sevillano, G.; Pazmiño, J.; Huerta, S. The Socioeconomic Drivers of Ethical Food Consumption in Ecuador: A Quantitative Analysis. Sustainability 2022, 14, 13644. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142013644 Academic Editor: Flavio Boccia Received: 29 August 2022 Accepted: 14 September 2022 Published: 21 October 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article The Socioeconomic Drivers of Ethical Food Consumption in Ecuador: A Quantitative Analysis Cristian Vasco 1, * , Diego Salazar 1 , Darío Cepeda 1 , Gustavo Sevillano 1 , Juan Pazmiño 1 and Shirley Huerta 2 1 Facultad de Ciencias Agrícolas, Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito 170129, Ecuador 2 Facultad de Ciencias Administrativas, Universidad de Guayaquil, Guayaquil 090514, Ecuador * Correspondence: clvasco@uce.edu.ec Abstract: A significant body of research has analyzed the socioeconomic determinants of ethical consumption, nevertheless, most of those studies have been conducted in high-income countries. With data from a survey with national representation (n = 11,526), this study aimed at analyzing the socioeconomic factors shaping decisions of ethical consumption in Ecuador, a middle-income country, where agroecological production has been proposed as a strategy to reduce rural poverty while promoting sustainable agriculture. Price is the principal purchasing criterion for 78% of the households in the sample, while ecological/organic label and support to local farmers account for 11 and 3% of the sample, respectively. Brand is the principal buying criterion for 8% of the sample. Consistent with prior research, the results of a multinomial probit regression show that ecological consumers are statistically likely to be wealthier and more educated than their price-driven counterparts. Contrary to the findings of previous research in Ecuador, ecological consumers do exhibit environmental awareness. Those with support to local producers as their main purchasing driver are also featured by high levels of wealth and education, nevertheless, they are not as concerned about the environment as their ecological counterparts. The implications of these findings for policy are explored in the Discussion section. Keywords: ethical consumption; ecological consumers; support to local farmers; multinomial probit; Ecuador 1. Introduction The industrialization of agriculture and the globalization of food systems are associ- ated with several environmental problems, including deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, pollution of soil and water bodies and biodiversity loss [1–4]. Furthermore, agri- cultural intensification is also related to negative social outcomes, such as increased rural poverty, income inequality, higher unemployment rates, and weakening of social cohesion in rural areas, among others [5,6]. Therefore, there is a growing interest in ethical issues in agriculture, with consumers paying more attention to the environmental and social effects of food production [7–9]. For such ethical consumers buying food goes beyond a cost-benefit analysis, as they are concerned about aspects such as the environmental effects of agriculture, seasonality of production, origin, the rights of workers, support to local farmers, and animal welfare, among others [7,10–12]. In this sense, Long and Murray [13] define ethical consumption as “the act of purchasing products that have additional attributes (e.g., social, environmental, political, health, etc.) in addition to their immediate use value, to signify commitment to their values and/or to support changes to unjust market practices”. Much has been written about the drivers of ethical consumption. Nevertheless, such re- search has been mainly conducted in high income countries. Thus, there is a need to conduct research in developing countries, where consumers’ motivations/resistance to engage in ethical food consumption may differ from those in more developed Sustainability 2022, 14, 13644. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013644 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability