World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 69

World Food Policy

The organization of street vendors into
advocacy groups is documented as the
first step toward legalization, albeit
partial.

Success stories of integration of
street vendors in Kenya (Mitullah 2003)
or India (Mahadevia et al. 2013) are in
line with a stakeholder approach, which
puts the economic agents who are affected
by the policy decisions and actions of
the system at the core of the decision
processes (Grimble et al. 1995). The first
objective of the article is to highlight the
economic and social importance of fruit
and vegetable street vending in Hanoi.
The second objective is to show how
stakeholder dialogue, based on such an
evaluation and organized interactions
between street vendors, urban authorities,
consumers, and researchers, enables a
more harmonious integration of food
vending in the urban frame.

stakeholders are particularly influential
on street vendors’ activities: their
customers, police agents, as well as district
and city officials from the department of
trade. We assumed that their perception
of street vendors may be influenced:
(i) by the scientific knowledge that we
could provide as international and local
researchers on their social and economic
role; (ii) by the way the street vendors
express their objectives and constraints;
(iii) and by the dialogue fostered among
street vendors, police agents, district, and
city officials, as well as local customers,
on ways to reconcile diverging objective s.
This perception influences their attitudes
and actions toward street vending (see
Figure 1). Hence, in this research, the
article authors (termed as “we”) acted
at the same time as researchers and
facilitators.

We made various studies of
the street vendor activity in Hanoi to
appraise their social and economic role.
The first one was done in 2004 and
updated in 2009 and 2013. We estimated
the number of vegetable and fruit street
vendors in Hanoi and the volume of
goods sold by them. In 2009 and 2014, we
also estimated the number and volumes
traded by other points of sale to estimate
the contribution of street vending to
total food distribution. We interviewed a
sample of street vendors to appraise the
role of street vending in their livelihood
and the impact of the legislation on their
activities. This involved 60 street vendors
in 2004 and 160 in 2013. A discussion
paper was prepared based on the
information generated, which provided
the basis for a stakeholder workshop held
in 2006, chaired by the Hanoi Department
and Trade with the participation of a

Method

T

he method is based on the
stakeholder approach in which
we consider street vendors as
entrepreneurs with objectives and
constraints that are influenced by
other stakeholders with whom they
interact. It is noteworthy that while
stakeholder dialogue based on scientific
knowledge has been widely used in the
field of natural resource management
(Reed, 2008, Grimble et al. 1995), its
application to food marketing issues
is not frequent, which highlights the
originality of the research paper. We
consider it to be particularly relevant in a
context of diverging interests and diverse
perceptions that characterize the food
street vending sector in Vietnam. Some
69