The social insectivore: Peer and expert influence affect consumer evaluations of insects as food

Consumers' Willingness to Consume Insect-Based Protein Depends on Descriptive Social Norms

“…To summarize, our research provided more evidence that insect products may be promoted using social norms, which complements recent research showing that social influence factors are associated with insect eating (Berger et al, 2019;Jensen and Lieberoth, 2019). As humans are a particular social species, leveraging the social nature may prove particularly useful.…”

“…Other results addressing situational factors of insect-consumption point to effects of insect processing (i.e., insect visibility, Hartmann et al, 2015;Jensen and Lieberoth, 2019), advertising content (e.g., hedonic framing, Berger et al, 2018) and cultural variation (Tan et al, 2015). Finally, previous research suggests that one main reason for individuals' aversion toward insect-based foods lies in the disgust they evoke (Hartmann and Siegrist, 2016;La Barbera et al, 2018;Berger et al, 2019), which allegedly results from Westerners' association of insects with decaying matter and feces (Looy et al, 2014).…”

“…Entomophagy, which is the consumption of edible insects, has also attracted increasing public attention due to recent progress in agricultural technology and food safety: Automation, reduction in microbial contamination by personnel, and increased space utilization have finally made insects a viable option for industrial and private production alike (Parker, 2005;. Moreover, deregulation allowing for the commercial production and marketing of edible insects (e.g., in Switzerland in 2017 or as provided by the new regulation of the European Union 2015/2283 on novel foods which entered into force by 2018) have allowed innovators from companies and top-level cuisine to enter the market for insect-based foods (Van Raamsdonk et al, 2017;Berger et al, 2019). However, despite these favorable developments and obvious ecological advantages of insect consumption, Westerners' willingness to eat insect-containing foods is still very low (Deroy et al, 2015;Hartmann et al, 2015) and, up to this date, scientific knowledge about the factors underlying this aversion is relatively scarce.…”

“…Jensen and Lieberoth (2019), for example, found that subjective insect eating norms significantly predicted individuals' tasting behavior of food products containing visible as well as invisible mealworms. In the study of Berger et al (2019), individuals were exposed to different peer and expert ratings about mealworm-based food products. The authors found that these social norm manipulations affected participants' acceptance of mealworm-based burgers and nutrition bars.…”

An analysis of the impacts of tasting experience and peer effects on consumers’ willingness to pay for novel foods

“…First, we focus on a novel food product involving edible insects. While Berger, Christandl, Bitterlin, and Wyss (2019) investigated peers’ influence on the acceptance of insect‐based foods by exposing consumers to peers’ product ratings, they did not focus on consumers’ purchase behavior. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to examine the issue of peer influence in consumers’ WTP for novel insect‐based foods.…”