School Meals and Children Satisfaction. Evidence from Italian Primary Schools

Maria Teresa Gorgitano and Ornella Maietta
Additional contact information
Maria Teresa Gorgitano: Università di Napoli Federico II.

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: This paper aims to identify which variables affect the degree of primary pupils' satisfaction concerning the quality of school meals. A representative sample of 33 public primary schools offering meals was extracted for the metropolitan city of Naples. Two questionnaires were distributed, one to the headteachers concerned and the other to the pupils enrolled in the 5th grade. Information about the catering companies is mainly sourced from the AIDA database. Pupil satisfaction is measured by two key variables: pleasantness of eating at school and food tastiness. Controlling for pupil, family, school, foodservice and catering company characteristics, the paper shows that catering company size is negatively associated with pupil satisfaction with the foodservice, whereas meal average production cost is positively associated with satisfaction. The study could assist city boroughs in devising meal quality indicators to be taken into account in designing competitive tendering.

Keywords: school meal quality; school foodservice satisfaction; catering companies; public procurement; tendering; quality-shading hypothesis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H44 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming in Food Policy

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp405.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:405

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Maria Carannante ().