## 2 Materials and Methods  
### Data Collection and Sample Characterization  
This survey was based on a questionnaire, which was developed to investigate the motivations that influence food choices and consumers' eating habits concerning the TFs of Epirus. According to the objective of the study, the questionnaire was built up in six parts. Each question was created in such a way that it could provide the best possible information for each section. The way the parts were built up was based on similar previous studies [23; 37]. The first part included questions concerned with the social-demographic characteristics of the respondents and specifically, sex, age, level of education, civil state job situation, and permanent residency. The second part consisted of five questions and was designed to assess the motivations that lead the participants to purchase food. Issues such as quality and price ratio, convenience in supplying and preparing the food of choice, sales, and motivations led by advertisements, were taken into consideration. The third part included seven questions focused on the general perception of the participants regarding the TFs of Epirus. Issues such as general awareness regarding the types, production, materials, nutritional benefits, reasons to buy, and contribution to the general promotion of the region were addressed. In the fourth part, issues concerning the marketing of TFs were assessed; three questions were given in order to evaluate the participants' overall perception of the ability to promote and the marketing strategies followed by the local companies. The fifth part included two questions that approached the buying behavior of the participants in relation to the TFs. Finally, in the sixth part, from a set of 5 questions, participants were asked to respond and provide information on the types of products they consume, their views on quality and price, their intention to increase or not the consumption in the future, and especially whether they increased the consumption of TFs due to the pandemic. To guarantee the quality of the data obtained through the application of the questionnaire, this was pretested with 30 respondents. This phase was pivotal to ensure that the questions were clear and understandable so that respondents could answer them easily. The research was carried out using electronic questionnaires as it was easier to distribute and collect during the lockdown period. The distribution method chosen was by e-mail, as similarly performed in papers investigating consumer behaviors [38; 39; 40]. A snowball method was used in order to obtain a large number of participants [41]. Due to the pandemic and the lockdown restrictions, the survey was conducted via e-mail, so the sample included only participants that had Internet access. However, the sample's population is very well distributed as it included a wide range of ages, civil state, level of education, etc., who were familiar with the new technologies. A higher rate for female respondents has been observed by other papers as well [42; 43; 44; 45], leading to the conclusion that women are more likely to respond to food-related surveys as they are primarily involved in the household organization. Furthermore, the sample used is representative, that is, people who are familiar with the concept of TF and therefore could provide reliable answers (in order to accurately describe their choice to buy these foods), which allowed us to specifically investigate an exact small part of the Greek population. The research questionnaire was created through the Google platform and the Google Forms function due to the ability to direct export of the results to an Excel sheet for further processing. The geographical context for the present study was primarily the region of Epirus, focusing mainly on Ioannina city, which is the city with the largest and most diverse population of the region, as it hosts the university in northwestern Greece.