=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3293/paper77
|storemode=property
|title=Entomophagy: Young Consumers' Beliefs and Potential Attitude Towards Alternative Protein Sources - Abstract
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper77.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=Christina Kleisiari,Georgios Kleftodimos,George Vlontzos
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/KleisiariKV22
}}
==Entomophagy: Young Consumers' Beliefs and Potential Attitude Towards Alternative Protein Sources - Abstract==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper77.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
Entomophagy: Young Consumers' Beliefs and Potential Attitude
Towards Alternative Protein Sources - Abstract
Christina Kleisiari 1, Georgios Kleftodimos 1,2 and George Vlontzos 1
1
  University of Thessaly, Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, School of
Agricultural Sciences, Fitokou str., 38446, Volos, Greece
2
  University of Montpellier, Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier (CIHEAM-IAMM), 3191 Rte de
Mende, 34090, Montpellier, France


                Summary
                Entomophagy can be considered as an alternative protein source substituting traditional
                animal-based proteins. Benefits related to this are minimal requirements in water and land and
                lower greenhouse gas emissions. Although insects have been part of Asian, African and Latin
                American people’s diets, in Western societies consumption of whole or processed insects is
                viewed with distrust and doubt, usually causing negative emotions. The present survey
                attempts to identify and analyze the factors affecting the final choice and preference of young
                consumers for insect eating. Thus, based on the Health Belief Model and the Theory of Planned
                Behavior, a questionnaire was created and distributed to 343 consumers aged 18-45. Principal
                Component Analysis results verified that young consumers recognize the benefits derived from
                entomophagy (high nutritional value, environmental protection, their contribution to food
                insecurity). More specifically, participants believe that they would adopt entomophagy mainly
                due to low environmental footprint, nutritional value and taste. The nutritional value seems to
                be a priority over the above reasons, while they seem to be less concerned about the low cost
                (only 4% of the respondents). Moreover, they recognize potential hazards relevant to insects’
                consumption, including microbiological and chemical risks as well as the possibility of an
                allergic reaction. Another interesting finding is that the higher the percentage of plant proteins
                consumed by the respondents, the less they identify risks arising from insects’ consumption.
                In contrast, there is a high correlation (p- value <0.01) between animal protein intake and
                confidence in insect eating. From the analysis of the respondents΄ socio-economic
                characteristics, consumers of lower educational level believe on a higher level that purchasing
                costs of buying insects or insect-based food products are high. Greater willingness to purchase
                insect-based foods was observed in male respondents compared to female ones. It is also
                noteworthy that the majority of respondents had limited knowledge about entomophagy and
                were not fully informed about the positive health benefits of this type of foodstuff. Regarding
                the form of insect-based foods and products that were most likely to be selected, whole insects,
                as well as desserts with whole insects, would be less preferred. On the contrary, processed
                foodstuff such as spaghetti, cookies, flour, bars or burgers, are more acceptable as they are
                more familiar to consumers. In conclusion, although food neophobia is the most important
                limiting factor to insect consumption, consumers are gradually adopting more sustainable food
                choices and protein alternatives, aiming to reduce animal protein intake.

                Keywords 1
                Entomophagy, Insects, Neophobia, Consumer Behavior, Health Belief Model, Alternative
                proteins




Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: chkleisiari@uth.gr (A. 1); kleftodimos@iamm.fr (A. 2); gvlontzos@uth.gr (A. 3)
ORCID: 0000-0002-0814-2842 (A. 1); 0000-0003-2134-3582 (A. 2); 0000-0002-0735-2274 (A. 3)
             ©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
             Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
             CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)




                                                                                  416

</pre>