Public Food Procurement: A Systematic Literature Review

Published on March 28, 2022

Public food procurement (PFP) is a policy instrument that has been used to “link” different objectives at once. The authors undertake a first systematic review of the scientific literature that deals with PFP in order to 1.) assess the progress of the scientific literature concerning PFP in different areas of the world, 2.) look for differences among them and try to identify the topics on which these studies focuses the most. Accordingly, the research questions deal with the definition of the main conceptual dimensions developed by the academic literature on PFP as well as with the geographical and temporal differences among the dimensions identified. The first evidence is the increase in the number of papers per year during the last decade. Furthermore, the literature on PFP is centred on the concepts of localisation and structured demand and its impacts on food chain actors, on citizen-consumers and on sustainability at large. As a main research result, authors provide a conceptual framework of the PFP literature largely based on the concept of linkage that has been first proposed in law and regulation studies.

The present contribution is focused on two main research questions as follows:

RQ 1. Which are the main conceptual dimensions developed by the academic literature on PFP? and

RQ 2. How those dimensions are distributed according to geographical areas and temporal differences?

Consequently, the aim of this literature review is to i) assess the progress of the purely scientific literature concerning PFP in different areas of the world, ii) look for differences among them and try to identify the topics on which these studies focuses the most, and iii) develop a conceptual framework capturing salient aspects of selected research according to the approach of previous studies.