Just a little bit more legumes! Results of an online survey in Europe

Abstract

A web survey was conducted in France, Germany, Poland, and the UK to examine how providing information about the benefits of legumes could influence purchase intent. In each country, 600 participants were recruited in September 2020. First, participants answered a series of questions about their dietary habits. Second, they were asked about their intention to purchase lentils, before and after they read an informational message about the nutritional or environmental benefits of lentils. The results show that receiving this information significantly affected purchase intent, even if the impact was relatively small. Indeed, after this revelation of information, about 10% of participants expressed a change of mind regarding their purchase intent. This effect was dependent on product type (i.e. dried lentils vs lentil pasta) and information type (i.e. nutritional vs environmental benefits). Across countries and products, information about the food’s environmental benefits had often a greater impact on purchase intent than did information about the food’s nutritional benefits. After reading the informational messages, 25-42% of all the participants said they planned to eat more legumes in the future. As consumers choices are weak drivers for developing legumes cultivation, other instruments focusing on farmers incentives such as subsidies could be selected.