The Influence of Various Information About Insect Content and Its Advantages on the Acceptance of Foods Containing Insects

ABSTRACT

Information about the content of food products affects the potential consumers’ willingness to purchase certain foodstuffs and include them in their diet. The presentation and scope of information are essential in the case of marketing specific products such as insect-based foods. The purpose of our study was to investigate the influence of information about a product’s advantages, coupled with verbal and visual information provided on the packaging, on the participants’ assessment of food containing insects. The participants (N = 659) were informed about the environmental or health benefits of ingesting insects. They were subsequently presented with a picture of a food product with different types of information about the insect content and asked to evaluate the product. The results suggest that providing images of insects on the packaging results in a lower assessment of the food containing insects. A brief presentation of the advantages of entomophagy has no impact on insect-based food assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Food labeling
• edible insects
• perception of food
• novel food
• consumer behavior

Author contributions

Katarzyna Goncikowska: Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft, Formal analysis, Writing – Review & Editing

Klaudia Modlinska: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analisis, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing

Dominika Adamczyk: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Visualization, Writing - Original Draft

Umut Can Altuntaş: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing – Original Draft

Dominika Maison: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing

Wojciech Pisula: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing – Review & Editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Supervision

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Science Center in Poland, grant number UMO-2017/27/B/HS6/01197.