Insect Food Consumption: Assessing Levels of Acceptance and
Adoption - Abstract
Stylianos Kartakis 1, Christina Kleisiari 2, Georgios Kleftodimos 1 and George Vlontzos 2
1
  University of Montpellier, Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier (CIHEAM-IAMM), 3191 Rte de
Mende, 34090, Montpellier, France
2
  University of Thessaly, Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, School of
Agricultural Sciences, Fitokou str., 38446, Volos, Greece


                 Summary
                 Even though insect-based food has already been integrated as part of their diet within a
                 significant percentage of the world’s population, that was not the case in Western countries
                 until recently. Insects have been emphasized not only as an alternative source of protein with
                 the potential to replace traditional meat products designated for human consumption but also
                 for improving their feed-conversion and resource (water, land) efficiency, making these types
                 of food a promising way to counteract numerous upcoming global food challenges. Insect-
                 based food represents a niche market in the EU since it is a rather new trend for European food
                 habits. The absence of a completely formulated and appropriate legal framework impedes the
                 mass production of insects, their derivatives, and therefore the development of this market.
                 However, according to the EU’s legislation (No. 2015/2283), edible insects have been added
                 to the “Novel Foods” category, and so their production and their trade have started, but only in
                 specific European countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria,
                 Sweden, and Finland. It is expected that the rest of the European countries will follow this path
                 in the foreseeable future and more consumers will become aware of the opportunities and
                 benefits provided by insect-based food, not thoroughly for direct human consumption, but also
                 as a protein-rich animal feed. In most European countries though, the edible insect market is
                 imminent, yet not present, so the consumers’ existing knowledge and attitudes towards the
                 forthcoming market of edible insects were studied.
                 This survey tries to assess consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards insect food. Therefore, a
                 questionnaire has been created and 302 active Greek consumers participated, divided into 4
                 age groups (18 – 50+ years old). The results of this research indicated that the vast majority of
                 the respondents (more than 70%) are not familiar with insect-based food and its benefits, but a
                 significant percentage of them are willing to try and learn more about these types of food.
                 consumer profiles derived from Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the sample are in
                 agreement with the existing literature, referring to the fact that a positive attitude towards
                 insect-based food is following the existing knowledge on the particular topic. Although this
                 observed tendency of “neophilia” to taste and discover more about edible insects, does not
                 signify the participants’ willingness to buy these types of food and incorporate them into their
                 diet. It is quite interesting to be mentioned the unwillingness of the consumers to pay a higher
                 or even the same price for an insect-based product, compared to the price of its conventionally
                 produced equivalent, contrasting with the fact that the production cost of an insect-related food
                 product is still relatively high in Europe since this market is in an early stage.

                 Keywords 1
                 Entomophagy, Insects, Consumer behavior, Health Belief Model, Agriculture




Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: stelios.kartakis@hotmail.com (A. 1); chkleisiari@uth.gr (A. 2); kleftodimos@iamm.fr (A. 3); gvlontzos@uth.gr (A. 4)
ORCID: 0000-0002-0814-2842 (A. 2); 0000-0003-2134-3582 (A. 3); 0000-0002-0735-2274 (A. 4)
              ©️ 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)




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