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Volume 4, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2056-6522
  • E-ISSN: 2056-6530
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Abstract

Edible insects are regarded as one of the most sustainable animal protein sources for human consumption, but for western people insects are a rather unusual food ingredient. In the media, however, insect consumption is gaining increasing attention and people are starting to acknowledge insects as a potential source of protein. The eating of insects, ‘entomophagy’, is bringing new insect food companies, ‘ento-preneurs’ to the market, yet current research is still insufficient and relatively fragmented to support the commercialization of insect-based food products. Therefore, more systematic research approaches are needed in this area. This review article introduces the benefits and challenges of insect-eating, discusses the factors that are known to influence consumer acceptance, and categorizes factors including adoption strategies into a framework that can be applied in future consumer studies on entomophagy. In addition, the article introduces three distinctive examples of design interventions to illustrate how design can contribute as a strategy to support the general adoption of insect foods by western consumers.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Norwegian Research Council NFR (Award 271053/E50)
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Intellect Limited.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY licence permits commercial and non-commerical reuse.
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2019-04-01
2024-04-19
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Consumer acceptance of edible insects and design interventions as adoption strategy
International Journal of Food Design 4, 39 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfd.4.1.39_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ijfd.4.1.39_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ijfd.4.1.39_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): consumer acceptance; consumer behaviour; design; design research; edible insects; entomophagy; marketing; sustainability

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