Consumer acceptance of novel sustainable food technologies: A multi-country survey

Abstract

Efforts to reduce the environmental burden of agri-food systems have fostered technological advances to enable a transition towards more sustainable production and diets. Such a transition is only possible if consumers are willing to accept foods produced using novel technologies. Previous research on consumer acceptance has generally focused on individual technologies in isolation, rendering comparisons across studies difficult, and mostly considered average acceptance without devoting attention to individual differences among consumers. Additionally, available data overwhelmingly pertained to European and North American consumers, whereas much less is known about consumer perception in non-Western countries. Against this backdrop, this study examined consumer acceptance and perception of a wide range of novel, sustainable food technologies in four countries (Australia, India, Singapore, and the USA, N = 2494 in total) using survey methodology. For each technology, willingness-to-consume (WTC, operationalized as expected frequency of consumption), emotional associations, and situational appropriateness responses were collected. All measures revealed major differences in consumer perception of novel food technologies, identifying three groups: 1) technologies with high consumer acceptance comprising vegetables from urban farming and vegetables packaged in a modified atmosphere; 2) technologies with medium consumer acceptance comprising fish reared in aquaponics systems, plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy, and gene-editing; 3) technologies with low consumer acceptance comprising insect ingredients, cell-cultured meat and cell-cultured fish. Technologies in the high acceptance group were perceived as healthier and apt to move one's diet in a more sustainable direction, whereas consumers had issues associating specific benefits to the less accepted technologies. Cross-cultural differences were identified. Most notably, Indian consumers responded more positively to all novel food technologies, especially compared to consumers in the US and Australia. Finally, four pan-national consumer segments were identified based on their overall patterns of acceptance towards novel food technologies. The segments varied primarily in terms of baseline WTC (low, medium, and high), indicating that consumers tended to accept or reject novel food technologies regardless of their nature. The segment characterized by a high acceptance included only about a fifth of the consumers, showing that WTC towards novel food technologies for most consumers ranged from moderate to outright rejection. Collectively, the findings of this study suggest that consumers' general skepticism regarding technologies in the food domain remains a significant challenge towards achieving more sustainable diets.