Consumer attitudes to vertical farming (indoor plant factory with artificial lighting) in China, Singapore, UK, and USA: A multi-method study.

Major changes are needed both with regard to what we eat and how food is produced. The latter is the focus of the present research, specifically the rise of controlled environment agriculture. In this context, empirical research is presented on consumer attitudes to vertical farming (VF) (i.e., indoor plant factory with artificial lighting), conducted in four countries (USA, UK, Singapore, and China) using online surveys (637-683 participants per country with matched gender and age group distributions). A multi-method research approach was used, including a novel methodology of text highlighting, which requires that participants read a descriptive text about VF with mentions of pros and cons and use highlighter functions to select aspects of the text that they 'like' and 'dislike'. Based on the information provided in the text, attitudes towards VF were largely positive in the four countries. The characteristics of VF that aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were identified as key drivers of positive attitudes (i.e., higher yield, reduction of carbon emissions, and securing access to food). On the other hand, high energy use and premium prices contributed to negative attitudes about VF. Although the majority of participants responded to the text with an overall positive attitude towards VF, there were smaller groups of participants in every country who expressed a negative or neutral/ambivalent attitude. These between-segment differences were larger than cross-cultural differences, although the latter did exist, particularly for selected aspects of VF. For example, Chinese participants tended to be the least negative about the use of robots to help planting and harvesting. Future research is needed to understand consumer responses to aspects VF not covered in the text (e.g., powering VF with renewable energy, product range), and consumer insights about VF should be sought in other countries.

A comparison of five methodological variants of emoji questionnaires for measuring product elicited emotional associations: An application with seafood among Chinese consumers.

Product insights beyond hedonic responses are increasingly sought and include emotional associations. Various word-based questionnaires for direct measurement exist and an emoji variant was recently proposed. Herein, emotion words are replaced with emoji conveying a range of emotions. Further assessment of emoji questionnaires is needed to establish their relevance in food-related consumer research. Methodological research contributes hereto and in the present research the effects of question wording and response format are considered. Specifically, a web study was conducted with Chinese consumers (n=750) using four seafood names as stimuli (mussels, lobster, squid and abalone). Emotional associations were elicited using 33 facial emoji. Explicit reference to "how would you feel?" in the question wording changed product emoji profiles minimally. Consumers selected only a few emoji per stimulus when using CATA (check-all-that-apply) questions, and layout of the CATA question had only a small impact on responses. A comparison of CATA questions with forced yes/no questions and RATA (rate-all-that-apply) questions revealed an increase in frequency of emoji use for yes/no questions, but not a corresponding improvement in sample discrimination. For the stimuli in this research, which elicited similar emotional associations, RATA was probably the best methodological choice, with 8.5 emoji being used per stimulus, on average, and increased sample discrimination relative to CATA (12% vs. 6-8%). The research provided additional support for the potential of emoji surveys as a method for measurement of emotional associations to foods and beverages and began contributing to development of guidelines for implementation.