The doctoral work of Sarah Wangui Muiruri concludes that the Norwegian acceptance for sustainable dietary alternatives is affected by trust, food choice motives, personality traits and socioeconomic factors.
This thesis focuses on sustainable food consumption, consumer behaviour and food choice and contains four papers. The first paper uses data from an online survey conducted in Norway and the three remaining papers use data from a repeated cross-sectional Norwegian survey. Specifically, the papers investigate the consumer acceptance of sustainable diets among Norwegian consumers.
The first paper investigates the factors affecting dietary sustainability with a focus on preference for domestic foods and its relation to consumption of red and white meat, fish and plant-based foods and self-identification as a meat reducer. The paper also investigates the role of environmental and health attitudes. Preference for domestic food is associated with higher likelihood of consuming plant-based food and higher consumption of red meat. Health concern is associated with high white meat and fish consumption and environmental concern with a higher likelihood of consuming plant-based foods and identifying as a meat reducer.
The second paper investigates the consumer acceptance of cultured meat. It examines the effects of trust, food choice motives and socioeconomic factors, on the willingness to try cultured meat. The paper also investigates changes in the importance of the determinants over time. No significant changes over time are found. Social trust and support for green parties are positively associated with being willing to try cultured meat and trust in food authorities is negatively associated with being unwilling to try. Emphasizing the environment, health, novelty and price are also positively associated with being willing to try while emphasizing naturalness and safety has a negative association. Being younger, higher educated and living in an urban area has a positive association with being willing to try cultured meat while being female, religious and vegetarian has a negative association.
The third paper evaluates the consumer acceptance of food made from insects. It investigates the effect of trust, food choice motives and the big five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (OCEAN)) on the willingness to try food made from insects. Furthermore, the paper examines the mediating role of safety concerns and the moderating role of sociodemographic factors. Social trust, trust in food authorities and emphasis on the environment, health and novelty are positively associated with willingness to try while emphasizing naturalness and safety has a negative association. Safety concern is also a significant mediator. For personality traits, openness is positively associated with willingness to try food made from insects while conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness have a negative association. Gender, education, age and urban living moderate some paths.
The fourth paper delves into the consumer acceptance of plant-based meat analogues (PBMA). It investigates the effect of food choice motives and socioeconomic factors on the consumption of PBMA. The paper also investigates changes in the importance of determinants of PBMA consumption over time. Emphasizing the environment, animal welfare, and novelty were positively associated with PBMA consumption while emphasizing familiarity and Norwegian origin were negatively associated. Younger, higher educated, urban, and vegetarian respondents were more likely to consume PBMA. Use of social media had a positive effect on the consumption, for the total sample but not on each survey round. A declining effect of social media is found.
The findings of the four papers identify important factors affecting consumers’ food choice behaviour. Moreover, they identify potential drivers and barriers towards the uptake of more sustainable dietary alternatives. These results also highlight the similarities and differences in consumers’ preferences for different meat alternatives which could be useful for marketing and policy recommendations.