Journal of Aviation Consumer Science and Captive Consumption Ethics
Chen, R., Delacroix, M., Osei, T.
Department of Applied Nutritional Ethics, Harwick University
Aviation Consumer Experience Research Unit, Meridian Institute
Received: 14 March 2025 · Accepted: 14 March 2025
This study examines the psychological and nutritional consequences of commercial airline meal provision in contexts where alternatives are structurally unavailable. The Captive Consumption Distress Scale (CCDS) was administered to 268 long-haul air passengers across three airline classes of service. Results indicate that economy passengers consumed food they would not have selected under non-captive conditions in 82% of cases. Nutritional satisfaction scores were significantly below non-captive baseline. Eighty-one percent ate the meal anyway, a behavior the authors term 'altitude compliance.' The food is not good. The alternative is nothing. The nothing is not an acceptable alternative at altitude.
Commercial aviation creates, by design, an environment of nutritional captivity: passengers are removed from terrestrial food supply chains, constrained to their seats by cruising altitude, and offered food produced for conditions of mass captivity that prioritize logistics over palatability (Stuckey, 2003). Unlike restaurant or retail food contexts where consumer choice is real, the air passenger's 'choice' of meal option operates within a set so limited that it constitutes, in the consumer behavior literature, a coerced decision (Brehm, 1966). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of this condition among frequent flyers, airline food has not been examined through a nutritional consent framework that formally distinguishes captive from voluntary consumption. The present study provides this framework and applies the CCDS to a sample of long-haul passengers across service classes.
Participants.
Two hundred and sixty-eight long-haul passengers (M flight duration = 9.4 hours, SD = 2.1) were recruited across three airlines. Exclusion criteria included business class passengers (structural over-provision conditions), passengers who had brought their own food (n = 22, a population whose foresight removed them from the primary analysis but impressed the research team), and passengers who rated airline food as 'good' in initial screening (n = 7, outliers). IRB protocol AV-2024-0189 was approved.
Instruments.
The Captive Consumption Distress Scale (CCDS; 17 items, α = .86) measured meal acceptability under captive conditions, counterfactual choice frequency ('I would not have chosen this on the ground'), altitude compliance behavior, and post-meal regret. A control group rated the same meals in a non-captive ground environment and demonstrated selection rates of 11.4%.
Procedure.
CCDS was administered in-flight following meal service and again at destination arrival.
Non-Captive Choice Equivalence.
Eighty-two percent of participants confirmed they would not have selected the consumed meal under non-captive conditions, χ²(1, N = 268) = 141.2, p < .001. Ground-environment selection rate for the same meals was 11.4%.
Altitude Compliance Rate.
Despite low counterfactual preference, 81.3% of participants consumed the full meal. Stated reasons included hunger (67%), boredom (48%), and 'it was there' (61%, an option provided as a free-text category that quickly became the modal response).
CCDS Distress.
CCDS scores were significantly elevated relative to non-captive meal comparators, F(1, 266) = 29.8, p < .001, η² = 0.15. Distress scores did not differ significantly between meal ratings of 'edible' and 'not quite edible.'
The 82% non-captive rejection rate / 81% altitude compliance rate pairing is this study's defining finding. These two numbers describe the same meal from two directions: structurally rejected under normal conditions, consumed anyway under captive ones. The gap between what people would choose and what they eat when choice is removed is, in the authors' view, the operational definition of coercion — gentle, plastic-wrapped, and served with a bread roll.
The 'it was there' response category (61%) deserves formal recognition in the consumer behavior literature as a distinct consumption motive category: the consumption of available food not because it is wanted but because its availability and one's boredom have produced an outcome that resembles eating without meeting the criteria for it.
The absence of any significant distress differential between 'edible' and 'not quite edible' ratings suggests that airline passengers have developed a cognitive accommodation to in-flight food quality that decouples consumption from enjoyment as a coping response to structural captivity.
Airline meal consumption is not voluntary in any meaningful sense of the term. Passengers eat what is available because they are at altitude, hungry, and have been waiting for something to happen for several hours. The nutritional quality of what is available is, by ground-equivalent preference data, rejected by 82% of consumers who would be exposed to it in conditions where they could walk away. The authors recommend enhanced meal quality standards in long-haul economy class and acknowledge that this recommendation will not be implemented until someone quantifies its exact cost in passenger lifetime value, which this study does not do.
Correspondence: chen@harwick-university.ac