Abstract
ObjectiveTo develop a model of the psychological factors which predict people’s intention to adopt personalised nutrition. Potential determinants of adoption included perceived risk and benefit, perceived self-efficacy, internal locus of control and health commitment.MethodsA questionnaire, developed from exploratory study data and the existing theoretical literature, and including validated psychological scales was administered to N = 9381 participants from 9 European countries (Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK, and Norway).ResultsStructural equation modelling indicated that the greater participants’ perceived benefits to be associated with personalised nutrition, the more positive their attitudes were towards personalised nutrition, and the greater their intention to adopt it. Higher levels of nutrition self-efficacy were related to more positive attitudes towards, and a greater expressed intention to adopt, personalised nutrition. Other constructs positively impacting attitudes towards personalised nutrition included more positive perceptions of the efficacy of regulatory control to protect consumers (e.g. in relation to personal data protection), higher self-reported internal health locus of control, and health commitment. Although higher perceived risk had a negative relationship with attitude and an inverse relationship with perceived benefit, its effects on attitude and intention to adopt personalised nutrition was less influential than perceived benefit. The model was stable across the different European countries, suggesting that psychological factors determining adoption of personalised nutrition have generic applicability across different European countries.ConclusionThe results suggest that transparent provision of information about potential benefits, and protection of consumers’ personal data is important for adoption, delivery of public health benefits, and commercialisation of personalised nutrition.
Highlights
Poor nutrition contributes to the incidence of many diseases, see inter alia, [1,2,3,4,5]
The advantage of nutrigenomics-based nutrition advice over and above that based on age, sex, body mass index (BMI), diet, physical activity and health status, is that genetic differences between individuals, which may interact with phenotype and co-determine health impacts of dietary choices, are explicitly taken into account [10]
Measurement model Analyses of one factor-models were conducted, for each construct separately. These indicated that the metric invariance across countries could be assumed for all constructs, except Internal Locus of Control and Intention to Adopt Personalised Nutrition (Table 3). These analyses showed that scalar invariance could be assumed for four out of eight constructs (Nutrition selfefficacy, Risk perception, Benefit perception, and Perceived efficacy of control and regulation), whereas partial scalar invariance seems to hold for the other four constructs (Internal locus of control, Health commitment, Attitude, and Intention to adopt), when adding only few relaxed inequality constraints compared to fully scalar measurement invariance
Summary
Poor nutrition contributes to the incidence of many diseases, see inter alia, [1,2,3,4,5]. Even if putative benefits to individuals and society can be identified, consumer adoption of novel food technologies, including those focused on the improvement of health, should be based on the premise of informed choice [15]. This a priori requires the understanding of the psychological and socio-cultural factors which shape consumers perception, attitudes and decision-making related to behaviour. The aim of the research presented here is to develop a predictive model of the psychological factors which predict consumer acceptance or rejection of personalised nutrition
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