THE PHENOMENON OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACROSS CLASSES OF LOCALITY IN TERMS OF CONSUMPTION SUSTAINABILITY

摘要

Due to the increasing stream of state-of-the-art goods and services, the recent years have witnessed a growing problem of sustainability of consumption and its impact on society and economy. In-kind food consumption from own farms or gardens, which bypasses the usual stages of preprocessing and market distribution, fi ts perfectly into the trend of sustainable consumption. The aim of the paper was to determine the level and structure of household in-kind food consumption across the classes of locality in Poland in 2005 and 2013 in terms of consumption sustainability. The main data source was the microdata of the Household Budget Survey, processed with the standard tools of descriptive statistics. The study found a diminishing importance of in-kind consumption in average Polish households together with its enduring signifi cance in rural households. This contrast seems to be the result of long-standing and still vibrant traditional patterns of consumption, as in-kind consumption has always been considered closely related to the rural lifestyle.