Table 3.
Consumer attitudes towards the benefits of eating insects.
| Total Sample n = 820 |
Neophobic Consumers n = 208 |
Neophilic Consumers n = 214 |
Insect Eating Consumers 1 n = 169 |
p 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insects should be incorporated into Western diets to address issues related to... | |||||
| nutrition | 4.33 ab | 3.51 | 4.94 a | 5.40 | 0.004 |
| food security | 4.16 bc | 3.53 | 4.76 ab | 5.21 | 0.009 |
| environmental sustainability | 4.47 a | 3.81 | 5.09 a | 5.41 | 0.047 |
| reduced food wastage | 4.35 a | 3.74 | 4.87 a | 5.34 | 0.008 |
| scarcity of agricultural land | 4.35 a | 3.75 | 4.90 a | 5.31 | 0.015 |
| animal welfare | 4.09 c | 3.56 | 4.47 b | 4.99 | 0.004 |
Values are means, where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. Different letters within a column indicate a statistically significant difference (p = 0.05, one-way ANOVA). 1 Consumers who indicated they had previously consumed insects. 2 p values shown are for ANOVA for responses from neophilic vs. insect eating consumers; p values for ANOVA for responses from neophobic vs. neophilic consumers were always <0.001.