Japanese consumers’ human values and consciousness factors influencing their willingness to eat eggs from termite-fed layer chickens

Abstract

The use of insects as food and feed has gained attention as alternative protein sources in recent years. In the present study, the Japanese consumers’ willingness to eat (WTE) chicken eggs produced by termite-fed layer chickens was quantitatively scaled, and the effects of consumers’ human values and psychological consciousness on the WTE were investigated using structural equation modeling. Data consisting of valid 998 respondents were collected through an online consumer survey. In the present study, it was postulated that ordinal termites and “healthy termites” that have a component for human health benefit were supplemented to layer chickens. The principal component analysis determined four significant consciousness factors (food neophobia, disgust, preference for termite-fed chicken egg production, and support for regional and forest revival). Based on the path coefficients, human values did not directly influence the WTE but influenced consumer psychological consciousness. Among the psychological consumer consciousness, disgust, preference for termite-fed chicken egg production, and support for regional and forest revival had main impacts on the WTE, whereas food neophobia had less impact. In gender comparisons, females had a higher disgust effect on the WTE than males, whereas females’ consciousness of termite-fed-chicken layer production was less than males. However, if termites had a component for human health benefit, then the difference between genders diminished in both disgust and consciousness of termite feeding for termite-fed-layer chicken production. Besides, females were more affected by synchronic consciousness than males on the WTE.