Insect-based food consumption: Hedonic or utilitarian motives? Moderation and segmentation analyses

Abstract

The ethical and environmental rhetoric employed by institutions and companies to foster insect-based food consumption neglects individualistic motives that can prompt consumers to buy this novel food. To fill this gap, this paper reports a study in which consumers’ hedonic and utilitarian motives and the relative consumer profiles for insect-based food consumption were investigated. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior, the study collected data from 929 participants and applied a structural equation modeling analysis to evaluate the moderating effect produced by hedonic and utilitarian motives on the intention to consume insect-based food. Based on the same dataset, then performed was a cluster analysis to define the profile of consumers according to the level of acceptance of insect-based food. The results indicated that hedonic motives have a positive impact on consumers' intention to consume insect-based food, while utilitarian-ethical and utilitarian-health motives have no and a negative impact, respectively. These findings suggest that promoting the hedonic aspects of insect-based foods would be more effective in increasing consumer acceptance than emphasizing only ethical and health utilitarian values; and they also highlight the importance of creating an emotional and experiential connection with consumers in order to improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts.