CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE OF CISGENIC FOOD: A CONSUMER SEGMENTATION

Elisa De Marchi, Alessia Cavaliere, Alessandro Banterle

Department of Environmental Science and Policy

Università degli Studi di Milano

elisa.demarchi@unimi.it

CONSUMERS (SPECIALLY IN EU COUNTRIES) ARE HIGHLY AVERSE TOWARDS GM FOOD

Such aversion can be related to:

- perceived risks and benefits (e.g., tangible vs benefits)

- risk perception

- safety issues (only 37% of US consumers beliefs that GM food is safe)

- ethical concerns/Naturaleness (play with nature?!)

- scarce knowledge

- previous safety incidents

- Psychological factors (e.g., neophobia)

INTRODUCTION

Main effects of consumer concern about GM food:

Limits research development Lowers return to investments in biotechnology application Barrier on the market

These limitations have prompted the development of alternative technologies

CISGENIC BREEDING:

The genetic modification of the recipient plant is done using ‘natural gene(s) from a crossable-sexually compatible-plant’, such as a wild relative (Schouten, Krens

and Jacobsen , 2006; Telem et al., 2013)

No foreign DNA: is this more acceptable to public?

INTRODUCTION

Up to now only a few studies have been focused on cisgenic food:

Mielby et al., (2013)

Cisgenic food are unnatural because they involve human manipulation,but they are LESS UNNATURAL than transgenic GM

Delwaide et al., (2015)

Consumers have higher WTP to avoid transgenic than cisgenic food WTP increases when consumers are informed about environmental

benefits

Still scant literature regarding consumers’ acceptance/preference/choice behavior/attitudes…

towards cisgenic food.

LITERATURE BACKGROUND

THE AIM OF THIS PAPER IS TO FURTHER EXPLORE CONSUMER CHOICE BEHAVIOR OF CISGENIC FOOD PRODUCTS

- How do consumers choose among different product alternatives involving cisgenic options?

- How do consumers process product attributes when cisgenic alternatives are present?

- Does consumers’ present/future orientation affect choice behavior?

AIM OF THE STUDY

Choice Experiment (CE) based on apples

Inferred Attribute Non-Attendance (ANA)

Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) elicitation

• Data were collected in Spring 2017

• face-to-face consumer survey

• 565 Italian consumers final sample 528

• Inclusion criteria:

- 18 years old and older

- food shoppers

DATA COLLECTION

CHOICE EXPERIMENT

The CE is based on a selection of experimentally designed apples

Attribute Levels

Price (per kg of apples) 0.95 €

1.35 €

2.15 €

2.75 €

Production technology Cisgenic breeding

Conventional

Country of origin Italy

Germany

China

Brand None

Melinda

Product: apples

CEHow do consumers choose among different product

alternatives involving cisgenic options?

CHOICE EXPERIMENT

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Bayesian design three stages

• Orthogonal fractional factorial design: 24 choice tasks, 3 blocks, 8 choicetasks each

• Pilot test on 70 individualsMNL estimation (priors for final design)

• Final Bayesian design

Choice task example

CHOICE EXPERIMENT

In complex choice situation individuals tend to use heuristics to simplify decisions

FROMFully compensatory models

(all respondents are assumed to trade off and consider all attributes used in the description of the product)

TOPartially compensatory models

(changes in certain dimensions may not be compensated for by changing any amount of other dimensions of the composite good)

Infer Attribute Non-Attendance through CE (ANA) (Scarpa et al. 2010)

ANA How do consumers process product attributes when cisgenicalternatives are present?

CONSIDERATION OF FUTURE CONSEQUENCES (CFC)

CFCLevel of individual concern about future consequences of present actions

Affects human behaviors in different domains, including:

• ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY BEHAVIORS: e.g., higher environmental concern, increased pro-environmental attitudes (Carmi & Arnon, 2014; Franzen & Vogl, 2013;

Gretibus, Lusk, & Nayga, 2015; McCollough, 2010; Joreiman et al., 2001; Franzen and Vogl, 2013; Carmi and Arnon, 2014)

• HEALTH-RELATED BEHAVIORS

CFCDoes consumers’ present/future orientation affect choice

behavior?

CONSIDERATION OF FUTURE CONSEQUENCES (CFC)

CFC ELICITATION

Consideration of Future Consequences (CFCs ) 14-Items scale

The CFCs construct is very easy for the respondents to understandsuitable to be used in an on-line survey on a random sample of consumers

CFCs scale does not require providing respondents with incentives in order to get reliable data

No domain dependence issues

CFCs has already been shown to be a good predictor of health-related and pro-environmental behaviors

CFC 14-items scale

Sub-scale*

1I consider how things might be in the future, and try to influence those things with my day

to day behavior.F

2Often I engage in a particular behavior in order to achieve outcomes that may not result for

many years. F

3 I only act to satisfy immediate concerns, figuring the future will take care of itself. I

4My behavior is only influenced by the immediate (i.e., a matter of days or weeks)

outcomes of my actions.I

5 My convenience is a big factor in the decisions I make or the actions I take. I

6I am willing to sacrifice my immediate happiness or well-being in order to achieve future

outcomes.F

7I think it is important to take warnings about negative outcomes seriously even if the

negative outcome will not occur for many years. F

8I think it is more important to perform a behavior with important distant consequences

than a behavior with less important immediate consequences.F

9I generally ignore warnings about possible future problems because I think the problems

will be resolved before they reach crisis level. I

10I think that sacrificing now is usually unnecessary since future outcomes can be dealt with

at a later time.I

11I only act to satisfy immediate concerns, figuring that I will take care of future problems

that may occur at a later date.I

12Since my day-to-day work has specific outcomes, it is more important to me than behavior

that has distant outcomes.I

13 When I make a decision, I think about how it might affect me in the future. F

14 My behavior is generally influenced by future consequences. F

*Subscale: F = CFC-Future subscale item; I = CFC-Immediate subscale item

TIME PREFERENCE ELICITATION METHOD

Consideration of Future Consequences (CFCs )

14-Items scale (as in Joreiman et al., 2012)

• 7 items refer to high time preferences present-orientationCFC-Immediate subscale (CFC-I)

• 7 items refer to low time preferences future-orientationCFC-Future subscale (CFC-F)

Respondents give a score to each statement:1 = extremely uncharacteristic of me7= extremely characteristic of me

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Two main steps:

1. PCA

•Principal component analysis (PCA) on the 14 items of the CFCs scale obtain CFC-i & CFC-f factors

2. LCM with ANA

• Latent Class Model (LCM) specification with inferred ANA

• CFCi & CFCf factors added as covariates

RESULTS

Class Probabilities 0.19 0.08 0.23 0.14 0.36

No buy -3.947 *** -3.947 *** -3.947 *** -3.947 *** -3.947 ***

-0.309

Price Mean -1.251 *** 0 (fixed) -1.251 *** -1.251 *** -1.251 ***

Std. 0.087

Technology Mean -5.033 *** -5.033 *** 0 (fixed) -5.033 *** 0 (fixed)

Std. 0.426

Brand Mean 1.797 ** 0 (fixed) 1.797 ** 0 (fixed) 0 (fixed)

Std. 0.752

COO Mean -1.827 *** -1.827 *** -1.827 *** -1.827 *** -1.827 ***

Std. 0.249

Covariates

Present-orientation Mean 0.430 ** 0.422 ** 0 (fixed)

Std. 0.174 0.2

Future-orinetation Mean -0.430 ** -0.421 ** 0.426 * 0 (fixed)

Std. 0.174 0.2 0.235

N 528

Log-Like -2755.852

--

Class 5

Ethnocentric

Classes

--

Class 1

Attentive Cisgenic averse Cue drivenCisgenic averse/

Price sensitive

Class 2 Class 3 Class 4

CONCLUSIONS

• While individuals in Classes 1, 2 and 4 (accounting for 40.1% of the sampled population) show high aversion towards cisgenic apple alternatives consumers in preference Classes 3 and 5 ignore this attribute (almost 60%) a considerable part of consumers does not consider the production technology as a key aspect to consider while choosing food products

• The COO is a main determinant of individual food choices in all classes

• Only 19% of the sampled population adopted a fully compensatory behavioral strategies

• Individual CFC plays a role in determining choice behavior and ANA further studies are needed

Thank you for your attention!