How do political, individual and contextual factors affect school milk demand? : Empirical evidence from primary schools in Germany

Despite the subsidies provided for school milk within the European School Milk Scheme, consumption has declined steadily in Germany. Thus, a federal research project was established to analyze factors that influence the demand for school milk. The results should form a basis to improve future school milk policy. To identify the factors affecting the decisions by individual pupils to order school milk and to quantify the impact of each factor, politically induced factors, individual and context factors were considered. Price effects and the associated policy issues were derived via a price experiment in selected German primary schools, while information on weekly orders for school milk was collected at the individual level. Detailed information on the eating habits, preferences and tastes, attitudes, socio-economic circumstances and characteristics of the persons involved was obtained by administering various surveys. The respondents examined in the study included pupils, the pupils’ parents, class teachers, school milk managers (primarily janitors) and school principals. To properly account for the hierarchical structure of the dataset (pupils within classes and schools along the different price steps of the experiment), a logistic multilevel analysis was applied based on 7336 pupils from 101 schools. The free-of-charge distribution of school milk had a high positive impact in the demand decision, confirming the importance of the policy setting (e.g., availability of subsidies). Although the price had an expected negative effect, its impact is limited. In addition to socio-economic factors (e.g., age, gender, immigration background and income of households), the behavior and attitudes of pupils and parents, as well as the context or environment surrounding the school milk offering (e.g., number of school milk products, whether teachers drink milk with the pupils during the break) had an impact.