Collation of Scientific Evidence on Consumer Acceptance of New Food Technologies: Three roads to consumer choice

The current report investigates consumer acceptance of new food technologies by reviewing the scientific literature. The review is organised along three routes to consumer acceptance of new technologies: The consumer benefit road: the central road of technology features influencing experienced product attributes; the technology apprehension road: a socio-political road where unfamiliarity and dread may lead to negative technology attitudes, which may create categorical rejection of any product created with that technology; and the retail/caterer service road: where novel technologies does not directly influence perceived product characteristics, but results in novel retail and caterer business models, product placement and customer relation services. The available literature on 4 types of novel food technologies Mild processing technologies; Electromagnetic methods; Texturizing technologies; and Novel packaging and storage technologies is reviewed along these roads. The results show that research remains fragmented in approach and usually adopts the point of view of a single road to consumer acceptance of a novel technology. Nevertheless by combining the available evidence recommendation can be made how the different roads contribute to consumer acceptance or rejection of a novel food technology dependent on technology haracteristics. A checklist for the introduction of novel food technologies taking account of all the roads and the technology is presented at the end of this report.