Trust, Fairness and Acceptance of Food Technologies

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
  • Trust and perceptions of fairness in markets have been shown to be important in consumer
    behavior in different contexts. However, there have not been many studies relating the concept of
    fairness is supply chains to food purchasing behavior. In this study, we explore the relationships
    between trust, fairness and perception of quality of food produced from three food technologies.
    The technologies are as follows: (i) bread fortified with omega-3 fatty acids using
    nanotechnology (ii) pork chops from pigs selectively bred for disease resistance using genomic
    selection (iii) baby spinach treated with essential oils to reduce concentrations of E. coli
    O157:H7. Data are from a small exploratory project conducted in 2015 at the University of
    Alberta, Canada, where 31 non-academic staff participated in stated preference experiments and
    completed a survey questionnaire. Stated preference data are analysed using conditional logit
    regressions. Different potential explanatory fairness variables are created using questions from
    previous studies. From the results, both the constructs associated with trust and with fairness in
    supply chains have explanatory power. Although there are some variations in results (depending
    on the type of questions used to measure fairness), fairness positively influences trust in the food
    supply chain. Future studies might need to consider including perceptions of fairness in supply
    chains in the analysis of consumer acceptance of novel technologies

  • Date created
    2017-01-01
  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Type of Item
    Report
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-gxpc-7k30
  • License
    Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International