Coping Mechanism and Food Security in Pandemic Times: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic occurs worldwide and is the second pandemic to be declared as a global pandemic after the avian influenza pandemic. Individual and household coping strategies are essential when dealing with such a crisis. This systematic literature review synthesizes published evidence on coping mechanisms and food security in pandemic situations and looks at future research directions based on the gaps found. The number of publications on coping strategies and food security has increased over time, especially during the Covid 19 pandemic. This topic interestresearcher and academics from various countries and disciplines. Data analysis was carried out using the endnote X9 version following the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis (PRISMA). The data was collected from the Proquest, Ebscohost, and Scopus databases. This review’s result is that most publications are in the 2019-2022 timeframe, area of health sciences, quantitative methods, empirical data, and individual case studies. The following review is an analysis based on the research context divided based on sub-criteria: pandemic impact, the main outcome, geographic location, economic development, and basic theory. The findings show that the impact of the pandemic that has been widely studied is about environmental quality and socioeconomic impact; no mention of theory; food security; in Asia; high-income and low-income countries; with the aim of policy development. The next review analyzes the main outcomes of food security and coping strategies. Based on this review, the most studied dimension of food security is accessibility using the HFIAS instrument and cross-sectional survey research design. Furthermore, there are fewpublications on utility and stability dimensions, especially the relationship between the four dimensions of food security, availability, accessibility, utility, and stability, qualitatively and quantitatively. In addition, publications regarding the relationship between food security from its four dimensions and coping strategies both qualitatively and quantitatively are also very limited. These findings create opportunities for future researchers to study them.