This study analyzes the attitudes and perceptions of Romanian individuals regarding entomophagy, which is the practice of eating insects, with the explicit purpose of finding out the factors that influence acceptance and hesitancy using a questionnaire with 470 respondents. The study tackles various issues related to insect consumption, current eating habits, shopping habits, culture and tradition, the willingness and curiosity to try new foods, nutritional aspects, environment, knowledge about current events, and sustainability. The acceptance of insects as food, although studied more and more in the last few years, still has more questions than answers. Neophobia is part of the explanation, but so are the cultural determinants. The people who make the decisions could be an important matter, so targeting the decision makers with specific campaigns could make them more open to try new foods. Out of the factors that influence food choices, the top three answers were: taste, whether the food is perceived as healthy or not, and the price, so palatability is the most important aspect. Knowledge is another key factor that has to be improved, as most respondents do not have proper information about the benefits or the positive aspects of eating insects.

This study aims to identify a general typology for the EU27, and subsequently in Romania, regarding the hesitation, acceptance and refusal of vaccination against COVID-19. The analysis we propose below is based on the information contained in Eurobarometer 94.3, the data of which were collected at the beginning of most of the national vaccination campaigns in Europe. Based on the attitudes and opinions expressed by the respondents of the European states (EU27), we constructed with the help of the cluster k-means (SPSS) statistical analysis a typology with four categories on the subject of vaccination against COVID-19. Our study proposes a matrix with five items/scenarios on a scale from total agreement to total disagreement. We chose a typology with four attitudinal types (clusters). We subsequently compared the results of the general European analysis with the cluster typology resulting from the same Eurobarometer, the same set of questions, only for the case of Romania, to see if this analysis sheds a specific light on the fact that Romania had a very low vaccination rate compared to other EU Member States.

No abstract