Climate Change and Consumer’s Attitude toward Insect Food

Abstract

Given the influence of rising environmental awareness, food systems and security are receiving increasing international attention. Previous studies have discussed the acceptance of insect foods but have been primarily conducted in a European context. Hence, their results cannot be applied to Taiwanese consumers. Regarding this, our study is centered on the theory of planned behavior and considers environmental concern and food neophobia to discuss the effects of consumer attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on the purchase intention toward insect food. We used purposive sampling to survey questionnaire answers face-to-face in Taichung city, Taiwan. We distributed 408 surveys of which 77.45% were used in this study. The results revealed that consumer attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and food neophobia significantly influence purchase intention, whereas subjective norms and environmental concern did not demonstrate significant relationships with purchase intention. According to these results, we suggest that businesses emphasize consumers’ product experience or reduce levels of food neophobia to increase consumer interest in insect foods and improve the acceptability of such foods, thereby increasing purchase intention.

Exploring Consumers’ Purchase Intention of an Innovation of the Agri-Food Industry: A Case of Artificial Meat

“…Consumers' PBC had a significant positive effect on their PI for fast food burgers (β = 0.014, p < 0.001), therefore H1c is tenable; that is, when consumers think that the purchase of vegetarian burgers is the right decision, their PI will increase. This result is in accordance with that of previous studies [20,22]. In addition, consumers' PK for vegetarian burgers had no significant relation with their PI (β = 0.235, p > 0.05), therefore H2 is not tenable; this result is inconsistent with that of previous studies [26][27][28]63].…”

“…It includes the understanding of self-ability, urgent-need perception, and convenience perception [46,61]. Chang et al found that the PBC significantly affected consumers' intention to purchase insect foods [20]. Therefore, this study puts forward H1c: Consumer's PBC has a significant positive effect on the PI for artificial meat products.…”

“…The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was employed to explain and predict consumer behavior patterns in specific situations. Since its development, this theory has been widely employed by scholars in the research area of consumers' purchase intention [19][20][21][22][23][24], which reveals its significance. For example, Yazdanpanah and Forouzani used TPB to explore Iranian students' intention to purchase organic foods with other research variables such as ethics and self-identity combined [23].…”

“…Wong et al used TPB to explore consumer's intention to buy suboptimal foods [22]. Chang et al used TPB to investigate consumers' willingness to purchase insect foods [20]. The main contribution of the paper is providing the first findings regarding the consumer behavior of a polemic but sustainable protein alternative of meat.…”

Opinions on Insect Consumption in Hungary

“…Socio-cultural factors determine the rejection of insects [ 28 , 30 ]. For most Western people insects are considered dirty, dangerous and disgusting, and they have an aversion to eating them [ 47 ]. The main perceived barriers are the sense of disgust arising from seeing insects and incompatibility with the local food culture [ 48 ].…”