Readings CTI YSS31806
Lecture 1 –Psychological and Sociological perspective
✓ Siegrist, M., & Hartmann, C. (2020). Consumer acceptance of novel food
technologies. Nature Food, 1(6), 343-350. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0094-x
✓ Van der Horst, H.M., Michielsen, Y.J.E., & House, J. (Forthcoming). No protein
transition without societal acceptance: Two reasons why the protein transition has
not accelerated yet. In S. Pyett et al (Eds.). Planned in Future of proteins.
Wageningen, the Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Lecture 2 – User perspective
✓ Gram-Hanssen, K. (2008). Consuming technologies–developing routines. Journal of
Cleaner Production, 16(11), 1181-1189. https://doi-
org.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1016/j.jclepro.2007.08.006
✓ Groot-Marcus, J. P., Terpstra, P. M. J., Steenbekkers, L. P. A., & Butijn, C. A. A.
(2006). Technology and household activities. In User Behavior and Technology
Development (pp. 33-42). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.
Lecture 3 – Communication perspective
✓ McDaniel, B. (2019). Parent distraction with phones, reasons for use, and impacts
on parenting and child outcomes: A review of the emerging research. Human
Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(2), 72-80. https://doi-
org.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1002/hbe2.139
✓ Pilgrim, K., & Bohnet-Joschko, S. (2019). Selling health and happiness how
influencers communicate on Instagram about dieting and exercise: Mixed methods
research. BMC public health, 19(1), 1-9.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7387-8
Lecture 4 – Economic perspective
✓ Brauer, B., Ebermann, C., Hildebrandt, B., Remané, G., & Kolbe, L. M. (2016).
Green by app: The contribution of mobile applications to environmental
sustainability. In Pacific Asia Conference On Information Systems (PACIS). Association
For Information System.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308708034_GREEN_BY_APP_THE_CON
TRIBUTION_OF_MOBILE_APPLICATIONS_TO_ENVIRONMENTAL_SUSTAI NABILITY
✓ Geels, F. W. (2011). The multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions:
Responses to seven criticisms. Environmental innovation and societal transitions,
1(1), 24-40. https://doiorg.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1016/j.eist.2011.02.002
✓ Otto, I. M., Donges, J. F., Cremades, R., Bhowmik, A., Hewitt, R. J., Lucht, W., ... &
Schellnhuber, H. J. (2020). Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by
2050. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(5), 2354-2365.
https://doi- org.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1073/pnas.1900577117
L
ecture 5 –Psychological and Sociological perspective
✓ Verpaalen, I. A. M., Holland, R. W., Ritter, S., van Hooff, M., Ebbers, W., Metting, E.,
& van der Laan, L. N. (2022). Resistance to contact tracing applications: The
implementation process in a social context. Computers in Human Behavior, 134,
107299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107299
✓ Kloppenburg, S., Gupta, A., Kruk, S. R., Makris, S., Bergsvik, R., Korenhof, P., ... &
Toonen, H. M. (2022). Scrutinizing environmental governance in a digital age: New
ways of seeing, participating, and intervening. One Earth, 5(3), 232-241.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.02.004
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,Lecture 6 – Communication perspective
✓ Caraban, A., Karapanos, E., Gonçalves, D., & Campos, P. (2019, May). 23 ways to
nudge: A review of technology-mediated nudging in human-computer interaction.
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(pp. 1-15). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3290605.3300733
✓ McKay, F., Wright, A., Shill, J., Stephens, H., & Uccellini, M. (2019). Using Health
and Well- Being Apps for Behavior Change: A Systematic Search and Rating of Apps.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, 7(7):e11926, https://mhealth.jmir.org/2019/7/e11926
Lecture 7 – Economic perspective
✓ Nash, N., Whitmarsh, L., Capstick, S., Hargreaves, T., Poortinga, W., Thomas, G., ...
& Xenias, D. (2017). Climate‐relevant behavioral spillover and the potential
contribution of social practice theory. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate
Change, 8(6), e481. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wur.nl/10.1002/wcc.481
✓ Tiefenbeck, V., Wörner, A., Schöb, S., Fleisch, E., & Staake, T. (2019). Real-time
feedback promotes energy conservation in the absence of volunteer selection bias
and monetary incentives. Nature Energy, 4(1), 35-41.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-018-0282- 1
Lecture 8 – User perspective
✓ Bosch-Sijtsema, P., & Bosch, J. (2014). User Involvement throughout the
Innovation Process in High-Tech Industries. Journal of Product Innovation
Management, 32(5), 793- 807. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12233
✓ Graaf, M. de, Allouch, S., & Dijk, J. van. (2017). A phased framework for long-term
user acceptance of interactive technology in domestic environments. New Media &
Society, 20(7), 2582-2603. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817727264
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,Lecture 1 – Psychological and Sociological perspective (Sanne)
Siegrist, M., & Hartmann, C. (2020). Consumer acceptance of novel food
technologies. Nature Food, 1(6), 343-350. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0094-x
Lecture:
- Consumers are often hesitant to accept novel food technologies;
- In the narrative review Siergist and Hartmann (2020) describe how heuristics and
individual differences among consumers influence consumer acceptance of agri-food
technologies;
- Heuristics: Mental shortcuts that enable us to substitute information that is unavailable,
or too hard to
access, for a piece of readily available information that is likely to yield accurate
judgement
Reading:
The research describing how heuristics and individual differences among consumers
influence the acceptance of agri-food technologies.
As we look to ‘disruptive technologies’ for transforming food systems, important questions
arise:
- Why do consumers reject food technologies that experts perceive safe?
- What factors influence consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of novel food
technologies?
Consumers will have a fundamental influence on what technologies in agriculture and
food production are implemented and successful on the market. Many consumers perceive
the use of food technologies as contradictory to healthy, nutritious, tasty food, which may be
a challenge for the food industry. It is crucial to take consumers’ views into account during
the early stages of product development.
Consumers often rely on simple cues or heuristics, such as their perceived naturalness of
food technologies or feelings of disgust evoked by the unfamiliar, as well as trust in the food
industry, because they lack the technological knowledge. Several personality factors,
including food technology neophobia or food disgust sensitivity, explain individual
differences in people’s attitudes toward food technologies. For selected food technologies,
we explain the most important factors that influence consumer acceptance.
In many domains, technological progress is perceived positively. The food domain has been
shown to be slightly different in this respect Some novel food technologies encounter
strong resistance by a considerable number of consumers.
Regarding food, technological applications are most often viewed as negative attributes,
while food naturalness (produced with a minimum of obvious human intervention) is viewed
as an inherently positive attribute
Role of heuristics
Consumers tend to have limited nutrition knowledge, incorrect perceptions of the
environmental impact of food products and scarce knowledge about food production.
Consequently, people’s evaluation of food technologies is often based on heuristic
processes, not on elaborate information processing Heuristics play an important role in
many decision situations. When people rely on a heuristic to assess a food hazard, a target
attribute (for example, number of fatalities caused by a food hazard) that is not readily
accessible is substituted with a heuristic attribute that comes to mind more easily (for
example, number of specific events someone suffered from a food hazard)
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, Affect, trust and natural-is-better heuristics: used to explain consumers’ risk perceptions or
acceptance of food technologies and food hazards
1. Affect heuristic: The affect heuristic proposes that people rely on the affective meaning
that they associate with an image or the associations elicited by an object when asked to
evaluate its risks or benefits
Gene Technology (GT): some consumers may spontaneously think of ‘Frankenstein food’,
and this perception may evoke strong negative feelings, whereas other consumers may
associate GT with ‘golden rice’; as a result, their association is positively tagged.
The affect heuristic explains:
- Why laypeople are concerned about some food hazards but not others
- Why laypeople and experts differ in their risk perceptions.
- Why laypeople differ in their acceptance of the same technology
- The acceptance of food irradiation or of nanotechnology in foods and food packaging
Experts can rely more on the analytical system for the evaluation of a food technology,
but due to laypeople’s lack of technical knowledge, they need to rely on their
experiential system, which is more driven by affect, concrete images, metaphors or
narratives
2. Trust heuristic: If people rely on trust to evaluate a food technology, they substitute a
target attribute (for example, improved yields) with cues that indicate trust in the source of
this information (for example, value similarity) Consumers who buy organic foods cannot
tell how these items are produced and whether their premium price is justified36. Regarding
other credence attributes of products, consumers need to trust that the agents in the food
chain honestly label the products and do not take advantage of the information asymmetry
- People depend on others’ performance or assessments helps reduce complexity and
remain capable of acting in a complex environment
- Two types of trust:
o Social trust: based on perceived value similarities, and people tend to trust
institutions with similar values as theirs and to distrust institutions whose
values differ from theirs may have confidence in the food industry’s
competencies to produce safe foods or in a food technology, but they may
lack social trust in the food industry because they believe that it values profit
more than consumers’ health.
o Confidence: based on past experience or perceived competencies
consumers believe that the promised added value in food products (fair trade,
organic production, healthiness) is actually delivered. It is not mainly a
question of the food industry’s ability and competence but whether it is
honest in disclosing benefits that cannot be directly judged by consumers
3. Natural-is-better heuristic: Natural evokes almost exclusively positive emotions in
Western countries. As a consequence, for the majority of consumers, naturalness in foods is
of high importance, and natural foods are automatically perceived as healthier and tastier,
as well as better for the environment
The absence of human processing is a key feature of perceived naturalness. However, the
type of processing determines how strongly it influences perceived naturalness:
- Chemical changes reduce perceived naturalness more than physical transformations
- The process (for example, minerals added to spring water versus minerals naturally in
the spring water) seems to be more important than the content (for example,
percentage of natural minerals)
- Domesticated animals or plants are perceived as more natural compared with GM
animals or GM plants
- The absence of additives is another important aspect of perceived naturalness
People perceive orange juice with added vitamin C as less natural compared with
orange juice with removed vitamin C, for example
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