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No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives

Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives—lab-meat and edible insects—elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing...

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Autores principales: Koch, Jan Andre, Bolderdijk, Jan Willem, van Ittersum, Koert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8232179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34203678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061380
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author Koch, Jan Andre
Bolderdijk, Jan Willem
van Ittersum, Koert
author_facet Koch, Jan Andre
Bolderdijk, Jan Willem
van Ittersum, Koert
author_sort Koch, Jan Andre
collection PubMed
description Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives—lab-meat and edible insects—elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing consumer acceptance, we argue that the disgust response—the main barrier to the societal acceptance of these foods—is not addressed. This is, we argue, because disgust is not the result of misperceptions (e.g., edible insects carry diseases) and thus unlikely to be overcome by information alone. Building on the latest insights into the social origins of disgust, this manuscript reviews an alternative strategy to foster the broader acceptance of sustainable food alternatives that currently elicit disgust. Specifically, we explain why and how public exposure could be a promising avenue for marketers to reduce consumers’ disgust response and thus increase the acceptance of sustainable food alternatives.
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spelling pubmed-82321792021-06-26 No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives Koch, Jan Andre Bolderdijk, Jan Willem van Ittersum, Koert Foods Review Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives—lab-meat and edible insects—elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing consumer acceptance, we argue that the disgust response—the main barrier to the societal acceptance of these foods—is not addressed. This is, we argue, because disgust is not the result of misperceptions (e.g., edible insects carry diseases) and thus unlikely to be overcome by information alone. Building on the latest insights into the social origins of disgust, this manuscript reviews an alternative strategy to foster the broader acceptance of sustainable food alternatives that currently elicit disgust. Specifically, we explain why and how public exposure could be a promising avenue for marketers to reduce consumers’ disgust response and thus increase the acceptance of sustainable food alternatives. MDPI 2021-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8232179/ /pubmed/34203678 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061380 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Koch, Jan Andre
Bolderdijk, Jan Willem
van Ittersum, Koert
No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title_full No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title_fullStr No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title_full_unstemmed No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title_short No Way, That’s Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives
title_sort no way, that’s gross! how public exposure therapy can overcome disgust preventing consumer adoption of sustainable food alternatives
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8232179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34203678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods10061380
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