Consumer attitudes towards different food-processing technologies used in cheese production—The influence of consumer benefit

Vol. 8, No. 4, PP. 271-280, 1997 0 1997 ElscvierScienceLtd All rights reserved.Printedin Great Britain 0950-3293/97 517.00+0.00

Food Quo&v and Pr&nce

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CONSUMERATTITUDESTOWARDS DIFFERENTFOODPROCESSINGTECHNOLOGIES USEDINCHEESE PRODUCTION-THEINFLUENCEOFCONSUMERBENEFIT L. J. Frewer,’ C. Howard, D. Hedderley & R. Shepherd Institute of Food Research, Department of Consumer Sciences, Reading Laboratory, Early Gate, Whiteknights Road, Reading RG6 6B2, UK The current

ABSTRACT The relative importance of ‘production method’ and ‘bent$t’ to the purchase likelihood decisions of 120 consumers for novel cheeses was assessed. Genetic engineering (transfers of genetic material between species), protein engineering (altering the characteristics of micro-organisms without transferring genetic material), and traditional selective breeding were compared. Ben&s were directed towards the health of the consumer, product quality, the environment, animal welfare or the manufacturer. Conjoint analysis indicated that 79% of the sample made decisions based on process considerations, although tangible benejt was a more important factor in their decisions. A further 19% did not consider process important, but tended to make decisions based on consumer benejits alone. Positive correlations between perceived benefit and need, and purchase likelihood were observed for those respondents who considered process important. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords: analysis.

consumer

acceptance

acceptance of the new biotechnology, particularly with respect to new genetically modified food products, and genetic

modification

in general.

A great deal of survey

data has been generated in order to try to understand whether the public are likely to accept the new products which will result from its application (Zechendorf, 1994). Failure to address the consumer acceptance issue early in the stages of product development may result in economic losses for industry, as well as representing losses in terms of research resources. Novel foods resulting from biotechnological treatments raise questions relating to conceptual, ethical and technological issues which extend beyond simply those relating to safety and nutrition, and due account of these wider concerns must be taken by both producers and risk regulators (Knudsen and Ovesen, 1994; Polkinghorne, 1993). It has long been recognised that public perceptions of risk are likely to be very different to those more technical estimates provided by experts (Fischhoff et al., 1982). In the case of emerging technologies applied to food production, public attitudes are likely to be defined by perceptions of ethical concern (Sparks et al., 1995;

INTRODUCTION

Straughan and Reiss, 1996) as much as perceptions of risk. Opposition to the continued development and application of genetic engineering has also focused on its potential for unpredictable environmental impact (for example, Rifkin (1985)). However, it is known that

of the novel food products of is likely to be dependent on many

factors including both processing considerations, and quality characteristics associated with the product itself. The application of emerging technologies to food production is very much dependent on the social context in which the technology is embedded - the wider concerns of the public regarding emerging technologies may be as influential in terms of impacts on consumer decisions as those quality considerations associated with the product itself. *To whom correspondence

examines

resulting from these new products are also examined. There has been a great deal of concern about public

Genetic engineering; consumer attitudes; conjoint

Consumer acceptance emerging technologies

research

of cheeses produced by the use of new micro-organisms which are the result of different technological approaches to processing. Consumer preferences for different benefits

public safety concerns, as well as perceptions that the technology is unnatural or unethical, can be mediated by perceptions of benefit or need (Frewer et al., in press), effects which are very much dependent on the nature of the application. Consumers are less likely to purchase genetically modified products than those which are traditionally produced if there is no tangible benefit resulting from the application (Hamstra and Smink, 1996), although there is evidence that benefits for the consumer are likely to offset this effect, particularly if the benefits are to health or the environment. However,

should be addressed.

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al.

benefits to the producer have not been found to increase acceptance (Frewer et al., 1996). There is a body of evidence to suggest that consumer attitudes are very much driven by perceptions of benefit associated with specific applications (Frewer et al., 1996; Hamstra, 1993; Heijs et al., 1993). Detailed examination of the extent to which individuals object to particular applications indicates that greatest concern is focused on those involving the transfer of human DNA, or the manipulation of animals, particularly for agricultural or food-related outcomes (Frewer et al., in press). Thus one of the central questions is whether public concern is focused on process considerations, (that is, concern about the application of the technology) or the actual consumption of products with DNA initially transferred from another organism. To examine this question further, it is necessary to compare the consumer acceptance of products of a particular type where there is potential for a wide range of consumer benefits, and to systematically investigate the trade-off made by the consumer for both the tangible benefits resulting from process considerations, and their responses to the processes used in production. Little is known about individual differences in decision making regarding the extent to which benefits associated with application of the technology offset these negative reactions. Whilst there are individual differences in the extent to which people object to particular applications of genetic engineering (Heijs et al., 1993), there may also be differences in the extent to which people have preferences for different types of benefits resulting from the technology. It is possible that people are objecting not to genetic transfers between different types of organisms but, rather, technological processing in food production. Whilst previous research has shown that the majority of consumers are undecided about genetically engineered food (Kuznesof and Ritson, 1996), examination of expressed purchase likelihood has indicated a preference for traditional production methods. It is possible that these preferences are related to rejection of technology per se, rather than genetic engineering specifically. It is also important to investigate attitudes within a particular kind of product, as it is likely that public reactions will be driven by reactions to specific products. There may be more subtle differences within a product type regarding the acceptability of specific benefits which will be missed if the more general ‘opinion poll’ methodology is used.

innovations

in cheese production

The development of new forms of chymosin through genetic modification offer the potential for new cheeses where there are advantages to the consumer (in the form of product quality such as improved flavour) to the environment (through effective recycling of by-products such as whey), to animal welfare (the production of non-animal rennet) and to the manufacturer (reduced

production time). A substantive review of developments in this field is provided by Law and Mulholland ( 1995). Novel cheese processes therefore offer an ideal ‘case study’ for exploring consumer reactions to new processing technologies, within the context of benefits to the consumer. In the current research, conjoint analysis was applied to examine the relative importance of different processing technologies and different types of product-benefit in the manufacture of novel cheeses. The relative importance to purchase likelihood decisions based on process decisions and different benefits of applying the process was made. Assessment was also made of the relationship between perceptions of safety, unnaturalness, need, benefit and purchase likelihood associated with novel processes in cheese production. Further examination of whether consumer acceptance was differentially mediated by recognition of different tangible benefits associated with the technology was made-specifically, benefits to health, animal welfare, the environment, reduced price and economic benefits (to the producer). Individual differences in purchase likelihood were analyzed.

METHODOLOGY Conjoint

analysis

The study of consumer decision making requires understanding how consumers trade-off conflicting criteria in making decisions (Green and Carmone, 1970). In the case of genetic engineering, it is likely that decisions are based on a conflict between perceptions of benefit and risk for each application, although some individuals may object to the technology per se. A useful approach to quantifying judgemental data is that of conjoint measurement (Green and Rao, 197 l), which provides a practical set of methods for predicting consumer preferences in cases where there is a trade-off between different factors of potential importance. Conjoint analysis is a technique based on multi-attribute decision theory, and which has been widely used in consumer research (Antilla et al., 1980; Green and Rao, 1971; Krantz and Tversky, 1971). In particular, the method has been used most frequently in the context of food choice (for example, see Steenkamp, 1987). It assumes that an individual’s decision or opinion about a choice alternative is based on features of that alternative. Since individuals may not be able to explicitly judge how important different features are to their decision, and how they might trade-off between different benefits and costs, it is more accurate to ask the individual to give an overall opinion on alternatives whose features have been varied systematically, and then analyze these results statistically to deduce the importance of the features. For instance, one might ask subjects to rate their likelihood of purchasing a number of products which have been

Attitudes Towards Di$erent Food Technologies

produced by different processes, have different costs, and confer different benefits. For each individual, the contribution of each feature to the overall judgement (the ‘part-worth’ of that feature) can be calculated (Green and Srinivasan, 1978). The experimental work reported here compared the relative importance of the ‘process’ (genetic engineering, protein engineering, and selective breeding of microorganisms) used in cheese production against tangible benefits (either to the health of the consumer, product quality, to the environment, to animal welfare, or to the manufacturer).

Design Seven tangible benefits (which could either be presence or not) were studied. For subjects to consider every possible combination of these benefits would have required them to rate 128 descriptions of cheeses; to study whether the benefits were rated differently depending on which of the three production methods had been used would have increased that number to 384. Obviously, some form of incomplete design was needed to ensure respondents were not overwhelmed by the number of ratings required. After considering a number of different designs, an orthogonal array (Logothetis and Wynn, 1989) was used to create eight combinations of benefits. Each of these sets of benefits was then paired with a production process to produce 24 descriptions of cheeses, which subjects then rated. This allowed us to investigate the effects of greatest interest (the main effects of the benefits, the main effects of the production processes, and the two-way interactions between production process and benefit) could be estimated while keeping the number of ratings each subject had to give down to a practical level. This was at the cost of not being able to estimate any interactions between benefits due to the design used. Each of the 24 products were rated, on a seven point ‘likert-type’ scale, on each of the following items.’

(e)

‘All items were adapted from Frewer et al. (1997). These items have been shown to be very closely linked to attitudes about genetic engineering in previous research, where neither the target of the benefit, nor the nature of ‘unnaturalness’, were found to discriminate between acceptance or rejection of different applications of genetic engineering.

In general to what extent do you think technology in food production at all to extremely

is safe? (anchored safe)

by not safe

Respondents were asked to examine the details presented for each cheese, and then rate the items by ticking the box that best described their opinion for that particular product. Each cheese was described by a set of attributes which related either to process considerations or to benefits. These processes and benefits are described below. Each cheese product was varied according to production method, with yes/no responses describing each of the potential benefits for each product. Presentation of each of the 24 alternative products was made on a separate card. At the start of the experiment, respondents were given information cards describing the different processing technologies and the benefits being studied. They were then shown the 24 cards, each one with a description of one of the cheeses (in terms of the production process and whether or not it carried each of the benefits). The order of presentation of the cards was randomised. Demographic data were also collected.

The processing technologies Comparisons were made between the consumer response to new cheeses which had been manufactured from micro-organisms which had been produced using different processing technologies. These were:

(4

(b)

(a) How

likely are you to purchase this product? (anchored by not at all likely to extremely likely) (b) To what extent do you think the development of this product is necessary? (anchored by not at all necessary to extremely necessary) Cc)To what extent do you think development of this product is unnatural? (anchored by not unnatural at all to extremely unnatural) (4 To what extent do you think the development of this product is beneficial? (anchored by not beneficial at all to extremely beneficial)

273

(cl

Genetic engineering described as a production technology where characteristics had been transferred from other species to result in a new strain of micro-organism used in cheese production. For the purposes of the current experiment, these new organisms were referred to as ‘genetically engineered’. Protein engineering described as being where new characteristics were created in the micro-organism-which did not result from genetic transfer from another species, but rather resulted from the restructuring of proteins to produce new characteristics. For the purposes of the current experiment, this is referred to as ‘protein engineering’. Traditional ‘selective breeding’ of novel strains to produce micro-organisms with novel characteristics.

These ‘processing technologies’ were selected to establish whether consumers differentiated between transfer of DNA between species and alteration of genetic structure which did not involve genetic transfers, and between processing technologies and more traditional approaches to developing new strains of organism to be used in cheese manufacture. At the outset of the experiment, all respondents were provided with an information card describing the different ‘technologies’.

274

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et al.

The benefits Benefits from applying the technology were selected to cover those which were relevant to industry, the consumer, and the environment. Specifically these were :

reduced production time resulting in economic benefits to the producer (b) reduced listeria resulting in increased safety of the product increased vitamin content resulting in enhanced Cc) nutritional value enhanced flavour of the final product (4 products of manufacturing can be recycled result(e) ing in reduced environmental damage the cheese is fully vegetarian resulting in animal (9 welfare advantages k) substantially reduced cost resulting in benefits to the consumer.

(4

Again, at the outset of the experiment, respondents were provided with information cards describing each of these benefits. The conjoint profile is provided in Fig. 1

Respondents All respondents were recruited from the consumer panel of a market research company in the Reading area. All respondents were asked if they consumed cheese products. They were asked if they would like to participate in a study about consumer food choices and food processing. If they agreed to participate, they were visited in their own homes at a mutually convenient time, and asked to fill in a questionnaire. Upon completion of the experiment, they were paid L5.00 (approximately US$ 7.50). The average age of the respondents was 41.8 years (s.d. 14.0), of whom 65% were female. The average number of years they had spent in education beyond the age of 11 was 6.7 (s.d. 3.2).

Analysis The primary focus of the study was purchase likelihood for each product, so ratings for this question were subjected to conjoint analysis. Analysis of variance was applied to each respondent’s ratings to calculate the effects of Production Method and the main effects of each BeneJit, and also the interaction between Production Method and each Benejit. In Conjoint Analysis terminology, these effects are know as Part-Worths. Respondents were then clustered on the basis of their Part-Worths, using hierarchical cluster analysis. Mean Part-Worths for each of the resulting segments were calculated. The 24 Part-Worths (three overall ones for Production Method, plus seven for each Benejt within each Technology) were too many to interpret, so an analysis of

variance was conducted on the pooled data from all the respondents in each of the segments, and the mean squares of each effect (that is, each Benejit, Production Technology and the Ben@ x Technology interactions) were plotted. This approach has been used in other fields (Hedderley and Wakeling, 1995) to judge how influential different effects are, when many effects are statistically significant. Initially, Part-Worths were derived from the respondents’ raw data; this produced a solution with three clusters which accounted for 75% of respondents. The remaining 25% of respondents did not fit into these clusters or form a homogenous group of their own. The three segments defined by the clustering were interpretable (in terms of the mean Part-Worths for each attribute within each segment); however, a reviewer suggested that if the respondents’ data was standardised before estimating the Part-Worths and performing the clustering, the results across consumers might be more comparable, and the number of ‘unclassified’ respondents might be reduced (Bass and Wilkie, 1973). The data were standardised (i.e. resealed so that each respondent’s scores have a mean of 0, and a s.d. of 1) and the analysis was performed on these data. The cluster analysis again produced three clusters, but this time 98% of respondents were classified. Since these clusters were also interpretable (in terms of the mean Part-Worths for each attribute within each segment), and they include more respondents, these results are reported here. Once clusters based on Purchase Likelihood had been established, the relationship between this and the other measures (the extent to which the product is Necessary, Unnatural, Beneficial, and Safe) were investigated by calculating the correlations between each respondent’s Purchase Likelihood scores and the ratings they gave on the other measures. The analyses were conducted using the ANOVA, HCLUSTER (hierarchial cluster analysis) and CORRELATION commands of Genstat (version 5.3).

METHOD OF PRODUCTION:

genetic engineering

REDUCED PRODUCTION TIME:

Yes

ENHANCED FLAVOUR:

no

REDUCED LISTERIA:

Yes

ANIMAL WELFARE ADVANTAGES:

no

SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCED COST:

Yes

ENHANCED NUTRITIONAL QUALm:

M

REDUCED ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE IN PRODUCTION:

YSS

FIG. 1. An example of the conjoint profile used in the experiment. Note that respondents had additional information about each technology and benefit which they could refer to in the course of the experiment. This is explained in the text.

Attitudes Towards D$%ent Food Technologies

275

Modification was least acceptable, and Traditional Methods were most acceptable, with Protein Engineering midway in terms of acceptability between the other two methods. However, production method did not dominate their decision; benefits could compensate for the fact that a cheese was produced by a less preferable method. For instance, a cheese where genetic modification had been used to reduce the risk from listeria would be almost as acceptable as a conventionally produced cheese with no new benefit (total Part-Worth of X).31+0.51 = 0.20 vs. 0.25+0 = 0.25). All the benefits significantly affected this cluster’s purchase decisions; the most desirable benefits were Reduced Risk of Improved Animal Welfare, and Reduced Listeria, Environmental Impact. Reduced Production Time had a small but significant negative Part-Worth, indicating that this cluster would prefer cheese which was not produced more quickly than usual. This may be because Reduced Production Time was defined as solely a benefit to the producer, with no indication that the ‘economic benefits’ would be passed on to the consumer. For Cluster 2 (19% of the sample), differences between the production techniques were not significant; they were primarily concerned with the benefits from the cheese, regardless of how it was produced. The most important benefits for this group were Reduced Cost, Improved Animal Welfare and Improved Nutrition.

RESULTS Cluster analysis indicated that 98% of respondents fell into one of three main clusters. Screeplots of the mean squares of the effects for each segment indicated that in all cases the Benefit x Technology interactions were far less influential than the main effects of Benefits or Technologies (Figs 2-4). Thus it was decided to focus interpretation on the main effects, and interactions are not discussed further. The Part-Worths for each production method, and for the presence of each benefit (a benefit which is not present has a Part-Worth of 0), averaged across the members of each cluster, are shown in Table 1. Part-Worths in bold type correspond to effects which were significant @ < 0.05) in the analysis of variance of the pooled data for all the members of the cluster. Also listed is the Relative Importance of the Production Technique and the Benefits, calculated as the percentage contribution to the difference between the most and least acceptable possible products. It is clear that the three clusters represent people with different criteria for likelihood of purchase. The largest group (Cluster 1, 80% of the sample) were significantly affected by the production method; Genetic

Residual Production Method x Listeria reduction Production Method x Environmental

impact

Production Method x Animal welfare Production Method x Increased nutrition Production Method x Plavour enhancement Production Method x Production time 3 ti u

*

Production time

l

Production Method x Reduced cost

*

Enhanced flavour Reduced cost

**

***

i

Increased nutrition Environmental

impact

Production Method Animal welfare Listeria reduction

*** I

I

I

I

0

20

40

60

I

I

80 100 Mean Square

I

I

I

120

140

160

1 ‘0

*** p.&lOl ** p&O1 * p
276

L.

3. Frewer et

al. Residual Production Method x Reduced cost

Production Method x Production time Production Method x Animal welfare Production Method x Increased nutrition Production Method x Listeria reduction Production Method 2 Production Method x Flavour enhancement B Production Method x Environmental

impact

Flavour enhancement Listeria reduction Environmental

impact

Increased nutrition

Animal welfare

***

Production time Reduced cost

***

I 0

I

I

t

20

40

60

*** I

I

80 100 Mean Square

t

I

t

120

140

160

180

*** pCO.001 * p4.05 FIG. 3. Scree plot of means squares resulting from the analysis of variance for respondents in cluster 2. For respondents in cluster 2, the scree plot indicates that only benefit main effects were important in terms of respondents’ purchase likelihood decisions. Again, production method x benefit interactions were not important.

Residual Production Method x Flavour enhancement Production Method x Listeria reduction Production Method x Production Time Production Method x Reduced cost Production Method x Increased nutrition Listeria reduction 2 Production Method x Environmental impact ti Production Method x Animal welfare W Production Method Increased nutrition Reduced cost Environmental impact Animal welfare Production Time Enhanced flavour 0

10

15 Mean Square

20

25

30

***p
Attitudes Towards D@rent

Food Technologies

277

other two clusters). Improved Animal Welfare, Reduced Cost and Improved Nutrition were all seen as significant benefits, while Reduced Risk of Listeria was not significant. The demographic characteristics of the clusters are shown in Table 2. An analysis of variance showed no significant differences between the clusters in terms of Age or Years Spent in Education. Chi-squared tests showed no significant difference in terms of the proportions of men and women in the clusters, or in terms of highest level of qualifications obtained (not shown). For each respondent, purchase likelihood scores for each cheese were correlated with the ratings of perceived benefit, need, unnaturalness and safety. Table 3 shows

Production Time was an important factor; again, this cluster were resistant to cheeses which were produced more quickly than usual. Oddly, reducing the risk from listeria also had a small, but significant, negative effect on likelihood of purchase. This is hard to explain. The third Cluster (12% sample) was significantly more likely to purchase a cheese produced by Genetic Modification than by Traditional Method; as with Cluster 1, Protein Engineering was seen as lying midway between the other two techniques in acceptability. However, the difference in production techniques was less important than the benefits available. For this cluster, the most important benefits were Enhanced Flavour, Reduced Environmental Impact, and Reduced Production Time (which this group saw as a positive feature, unlike the

TABLE 1. Relative importance of process and benefft on purchase likelihood decisions of cheeses. Average part-worths and relative importance for the processing methods and associated benefits are provided Average Attributes

8nd levels

cluster

PRODUcIloN METHOD Genetic modification of micro-organisms involving genetic transfers New strains of micro-organisms produced through protein engineering New strains of micro-organisms produced through traditional selection Relative importance BENgpITs OF NOVEL PRODUCT Reduced production time Enhanced flavour Reduced cost Reduced listeria risk Improved nutrition Improved animal welfare Reduced environmental impact Relative importance TABLE 2. Demographic

Part-Worth

1 (iv-89)cluster 67%

2 (N=23)chMter 19%

3 (N= 14) 12%

-0.31 0.06 0.25 25%

-0.06 0.01 0.05 4%

0.15 0.00 -0.14 10%

a.08 0.12 0.13 0.51 0.17 0.42 0.27 75%

-0.62 0.15 0.71 -0.16 0.41 0.55 0.29 96%

0.41 0.59 0.35 0.08 0.25 0.36 0.55 90%

characteristics of the different groups identified in the cluster analysis (Table 1)

cluster Demographic

char8cteristic

uusta (N=88)

Gender (% female) Age (years (s.d.)) Education (years(s.d.))

1 67%

66% 39.8(14.1) 7.0(3.6)

cluster 2 (N=23) 19%

uumter 3 (N= 14) 12%

74% 45.6( 13.8) 6.5(2.3)

50% 44.4( 14.5) 5.9(2.0)

UndigmntLtd

(N= 3) 2%

33% 49.0( 13.8) 5.3(2.5)

TABLE 3. Correlations within clusters. Correlations between purchase likelihood, and the other dependent variables, for each cheese product. The mean within-respondent r is provided, together with significance levels, along with the number of respondents with significant (p < 0.05, one-tailed) positive or negative correlations under P + ve or n-ve. ChurCtdStiC Chaster

n+ve Neccessary Unnatural Beneficial Safe ***pco.O01

57 3 47 23 **p
1 (N=

n-ve 0 18 0 0 *p
80)

67%

Uuster

r

n+ve

n-ve

17 1 13 4

0

0.6*** -0.2 0.5** 0.3

2 (N= 23) 19%

1 0 1

r 0 7*** -0:19 0.6*** 0.1

scllmmt

Cluster

3 (N= 14) 12%

n+ve

n-ve

8 0 3 1

0 2 0 0

r 0.5** -0.1 0.4* 0.2

Undiikmthtal

(IV= 3) 2% n-ve

r

1

0

0 1 1

0 0 0

0.2 0.0 0.2 0.2

n+ve

278 L. J. Frewer et al. the number of respondents in each cluster with significant correlations (significance judged at thep = 0.05 level, twotailed, with a Bonferroni correction). The average withinperson correlation for each cluster is also provided, Within Cluster 1, Purchase Likelihood and whether the product was perceived as Necessary or Beneficial were positively related, with 7 1% of the cluster showing a significant relationship between Purchase Likelihood and Need, and 59% showing a significant relationship between Purchase Likelihood and Benefit. Safety and Unnaturalness were not as closely related to Purchase Likelihood. In both cases the average within-respondent correlation was not significant, and the majority of respondents did not show a significant correlation. However, the trend is as one might expect - Unnaturalness tends to be negatively correlated with purchase likelihood, while Safety tends to be positively related. A similar pattern is seen in Cluster 2. In Cluster 3, the pattern is similar, but the relationships are not as strong. This suggests that although the three clusters evaluate benefits and technologies differently, they all agree that they are more likely to buy products which are seen as necessary or beneficial. Safety and whether the product is natural or not seem to be somewhat different concerns.

DISCUSSION Although genetic modification was seen as a negative feature by the majority of respondents, they were willing to accept the process if it were performed in order to produce particular benefits, in particular, those for the consumer. Against this, the vast majority of the sample (Clusters 1 and 2, 86% of respondents) were less likely to buy a cheese which had been produced more rapidly than normal, which may be because it is perceived as offering a benefit to the producer, but not the consumer or the environment. In other words, how the benefit resulting from the production process is described is likely to be important in influencing consumer acceptance. The lack of significant interactions between the production technique and the benefit was unexpected. It may indicate that consumers view production method and the benefits arising from it as independent of each other, and evaluate them completely separately. Although the clusters differ quite noticeably in their criteria for an acceptable cheese, these differences do not seem to be related to demographic differences. Unfortunately we didn’t take any attitudinal or lifestyle measures, so we can’t say whether they would be more useful in predicting or explaining people’s reactions; but certainly what differentiates people cuts across coarse demographic classifications. It is difficult to extrapolate from these results to other applications of genetic engineering in food production, or indeed to the development and application of the technology in general. Given that public concern is very

much focused on applications involving animals or human genetic material, each type of application should be considered on a case-by-case basis. In the case of genetically engineered animals used in meat production, for example, it is possible that concerns about risk and ethical issues will ‘overrule’ any perceptions of benefit arising from the technology in the consumer decision making process. It might be useful to repeat the study using an experimental design where genetic manipulations of different types of organisms are used as an additional factor in order to address the difficulties associated with generalizability of the results to other products. The one-product case study is of greatest utility in an applied context, where consumer decisions regarding specific products can be assessed. Against this, problems of generalizability of results to other applications of the technology cannot be addressed using a single-product casestudy approach with any degree of certainty. The genetic manipulation of micro-organisms has, in general, been found to be one of the least controversial areas of genetic manipulation (Hoban and Kendall, 1992; Marlier, 1992). In particular, cheese manufacture has been identified as one of the products associated with little objection from the public (Frewer et al., in press). Despite this, there are clear differences in purchase likelihood for a substantial proportion of the population assessed. For these individuals, decisions seem to be associated with process considerations (that is, genetic transfer between species) which is less acceptable than genetic alterations to micro-organisms per se. The most important component of the purchase decision in this study, however, appears to be the benefits of the technology. For those individuals who are concerned about the application of technology in food production, purchase likelihood is likely to increase if there are direct benefits resulting from technological innovations. Some consumers have a preference for benefits associated with environmental concerns and animal welfare issues (these individuals are likely to be representative of the ‘green’ consumer). Others also welcome improvements associated with nutritional and health benefits. Advantages for the manufacturer do not seem to be an important consideration in purchase decisions, and will not facilitate consumer acceptance of novel products. Against this, a possibility that reductions in price might represent benefits that can be passed on from producer to consumer are indicated as being important. Work in the US has implied that price reduction is construed as a significant benefit linked to acceptance (Hoban and Kendall, 1992). In the current research, these results indicate that consumer price reductions were of moderate importance to some consumers. However, there are individual differences in prioritization of preferred benefits, such that some respondents have a preference for cheap food, whereas others will only accept health or environmental benefits. Perceptions of need and benefit were far more likely to be related to purchase likelihood decisions than perceptions

Attitudes

associated

with safety of food processing

perceptions

of unnaturalness.

cally those in the second cerns-these

individuals

technology,

Some respondents

cluster)

(specifi-

had some safety con-

were also those who expressed

greatest

benefit

for environmental

benefits

erations

related

to animal

issues. Perhaps

consumers

with ‘green’

welfare

concerns

about

cannot

data

be concluded such

from

safety

these

concerns

centred on the environment be interesting

criticism

of the

assessment of respondents’ technologies reduce are

was made,

demand

likely

reflect

Against

customer

these

in

research,

future

problem

is that

made

reactions

in

however.

A

the orthogonal

further

model

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a

analysis.

which

consumer

decisions

emerging

technologies

Brand

be important

regarding

the

as consumer

the

recently

the label, product

implying

processing.

that

rather

decisions,

butes of foods that

a ‘hidden’

extrinsic ded

(brand

to include

the sample salient, which This

resulted aspect

price).

process dominant,

is taken into account particular

extrinsic

increased importance

between and

The

context

The development

process

product

in purchase property

as applications

nology become more controversial,

properties are

can be exten50%

of

to represent

a

characteristic

likelihood

is likely

attri-

which

For over

appears

extrinsic

to

they represent a large segment

who must be considered

of technological

making.

development

of products

within

the

and application.

with benefits to the consu-

mer rather than to industry appears to increase purchase likelihood factors mal

for those consumers

as being important.

who differentiate

Some individuals,

benefits related to the environment

welfare.

Perceptions

concern

of safety,

process however,

and to ani-

unnaturalness

do not seem to contribute

and

to consumer

decision making.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research

was conducted

‘Determinants genetic

of

public

engineering:

as part of a project acceptance

individual

We would

for his assistance

of

differences

Council in the UK.

our thanks

to Dr Fran

with the technical

of an anonymous

resulted in a much improved

group

entitled

rejection

funded by the Biotechnol-

Sciences Research

also like to express

and the comments

and

or

design,

reviewer which have

manuscript.

decisions.

to become

of a particular

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