Would you eat it? An investigation of how perceived sustainability and perceived risk influence consumer acceptance of edible food packaging.

Abstract

One of the recent innovations for food packaging materials is edible packaging which is initiated to deal with environmental issues. However, research into edible food packaging is still in its infancy, especially in terms of consumer perception and acceptance toward it. Therefore, the overall research question is how will consumers accept edible food packaging? In this thesis we focus on two main aspects which are perceived sustainability and perceived risk. We tested acceptance of the three products (edible water bottle, edible coffee cup, edible cupcake case) that vary in terms of perceived sustainability and perceived risk. The total number of participants is 120 which were recruited by a convenient sampling method. The results indicate that perceived sustainability was positively associated with consumer acceptance of the product. In contrast, perceived risk was negatively associated with the acceptance. Specifically, only health-related risk influenced consumer acceptance, which represented the physical risk dimension. Additionally, the mean differences of consumer acceptance among the three tested products were not all significant. The mean acceptance of edible cupcake case was significantly higher than edible water bottle and edible coffee cup.