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Article History

Received: 4 February 2026

Accepted: 29 June 2026

First Online: 15 July 2026

Declarations

Ethical approval: All procedures in this study were conducted in accordance with relevant national and institutional ethical standards and the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Formal ethics committee approval was not required for this study.The empirical data were collected while the author was affiliated with IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences. At the time of data collection, IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences did not operate a mandatory institutional ethics review board for non-clinical, non-interventional social science research. The study was not subject to mandatory ethics committee review under Austrian regulations for clinical or medical research, as it involved non-interventional, community-based social science methods without medical intervention, vulnerable populations, identifiable health information, human tissue, or sensitive personal data. Consequently, no ethics approval or exemption reference number exists.The research was conducted in alignment with good scientific practice and institutional guidelines. The FoodCoop’s general assembly explicitly approved the research activities, and all participants provided informed consent prior to participation.

Consent to participate: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Consent to publish: Not applicable.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Statement on the use of artificial intelligence: This manuscript used the AI tool ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-5.1, 2025) for editorial support, including phrasing, stylistic consistency, and the reduction of redundancies. All conceptual development, data interpretation, and scholarly argumentation were carried out solely by the author. The author retains full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work.