Willingness to pay for insect-based food: The role of information and carrier

Abstract

There is increasing interest toward insects as an alternative protein source in Western countries even though, so far, most Western consumers react with disgust and rejection. The literature on consumer behavior has mainly investigated the willingness to consume insects with regard to human diet, revealing that providing information about the positive effects of edible insects and using familiar foods while ensuring that insects are not visible will increase the willingness to eat insects. What is still unclear are consumers preferences for specific insect-based products having different features in a non-hypothetical market. The current study analyzed 200 Italian consumers’ preferences for three insect-based products (carriers) such as pasta, cookies and chocolate bars through a non-hypothetical willingness to pay (WTP) elicitation mechanism, the Multiple Price List (MPL), in a mixed within/between experimental design. The influence of the different types of information on consumer choice and the main forces driving consumer preferences for insect-based food were tested. The findings reveal that different carriers generate different results in terms of WTP for conventional and insect-based versions of the products. Further, without being provided information, consumers deem insect-based products either equivalent (the same WTP for the two versions of pasta) or weakly inferior (lower WTP in the case of cookies and chocolate), while when information on the benefits of insect consumption is provided, consumers’ WTP increase for all the insect-based products analyzed. Finally, among the psychographic scales, Food Neophobia and Beliefs and Attitudes toward insects negatively affect the WTP for insect-based products.