Trust, Fairness and Acceptance of Food Technologies

Trust and perceptions of fairness in markets have been shown to be important in consumer behavior in different contexts. However, there have not been many studies relating the concept of fairness is supply chains to food purchasing behavior. In this study, we explore the relationships between trust, fairness and perception of quality of food produced from three food technologies. The technologies are as follows: (i) bread fortified with omega-3 fatty acids using nanotechnology (ii) pork chops from pigs selectively bred for disease resistance using genomic selection (iii) baby spinach treated with essential oils to reduce concentrations of E. coli O157:H7. Data are from a small exploratory project conducted in 2015 at the University of Alberta, Canada, where 31 non-academic staff participated in stated preference experiments and completed a survey questionnaire. Stated preference data are analysed using conditional logit regressions. Different potential explanatory fairness variables are created using questions from previous studies. From the results, both the constructs associated with trust and with fairness in supply chains have explanatory power. Although there are some variations in results (depending on the type of questions used to measure fairness), fairness positively influences trust in the food supply chain. Future studies might need to consider including perceptions of fairness in supply chains in the analysis of consumer acceptance of novel technologies.