Abstracts Bachelorarbeiten

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Balmelli Laura (2023). Scarcity perception, openness to technologies and consumers' diet decision

Our planet is facing increasing challenges such as global warming, land degradation and scarcity of natural resources. Numerous research projects around the world have investigated solutions to address these issues. In addition to promoting environmentally sustainable actions, it has been shown that new food and energy technologies can offer the potential to address and mitigate natural resource scarcity. Previous studies have shown that perceptions of resource scarcity incentivize both pro-environmental behaviour and the acceptance of technological innovations. This thesis aimed to focus on an important and often underestimated pro-environmental behaviour, namely the adoption of a sustainable diet, and to study its link with the perception of resource scarcity and openness to new technologies, as well as with the adoption of other pro-environmental behaviours. To this end, we conducted an online survey (n = 202) with questions regarding the participants' diets, with a particular interest in the amounts of animal derivatives consumed. Using a series of other questions regarding concern about resource scarcity, adoption of pro-environmental behaviour and acceptance of new food and energy technologies, we found several significant correlations. Analysis of the data shows that the people who are most concerned about a sustainable diet are the same who perceive resources to be scarce and who are most likely to adopt pro-environmental behaviour and accept technological innovations. Gathering knowledge on how the public can be influenced to become more open to new technologies if they first commit to a more environmentally sustainable diet, could help find new solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

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Belli Lorenzo (2023). Consumer perception of cell-based fish produced throughnew technologies

This thesis examines the factors that shape consumer acceptance of 3D-printed fish dishes, which are products of an emerging technology with the potential to address global food security and sustainability challenges. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to investigate 3D food printing and cell cultivation technologies, their applications, and their potential roles in addressing food sector issues. An online survey was utilized to gather the necessary data, with ANOVA and multiple linear regression analyses identifying key predictors of consumer acceptance, such as Perception of 3D Technology, Trust in the Food Sector, Fish Consumption, Income, and Age. The findings indicate that Perception of 3D Technology is the most influential predictor of both Perceived Healthiness and Willingness to Buy for 3D-printed fish dishes. Trust in the Food Sector was also significant but less influential, while Fish Consumption only affected Willingness to Buy. Furthermore, people with higher income levels and younger individuals showed higher acceptance rates. This study broadens our knowledge of the elements influencing consumer acceptance of cutting-edge food products, offering valuable guidance for creating and promoting sustainable food alternatives using 3D-printing technology. The findings underline the significance of fostering a favourable view of 3D technology, establishing confidence in the food industry, and taking into account demographic factors, such as income and age. Additional research is recommended to invest-igate these aspects and uncover other potential factors and obstacles impacting consumer acceptance of 3D-printed fish dishes and related food products.

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Cereghetti Enea (2023). Consumers' perceptions of dairy and alternative dairy products and the influence of consumer characteristics

Dairy alternatives have gained significant attention for their potential to promote sustainable diets and address health concerns. However, research focusing on the perception, acceptance, and use of these products is lacking. This study investigates how consumers perceive alternative dairy products compared to their traditional counterparts and explores the potential influence of exposure to a vegan lifestyle on consumer perceptions. Additionally, the thesis examines the impact of consumer characteristics, such as gender, age, and exposure to a vegan lifestyle, on attitudes towards dairy alternatives and willingness to substitute traditional dairy products. A free sorting task involving 50 dairy and dairy alternative products and a questionnaire were completed by 100 omnivore and flexitarian participants. The results reveal that consumers predominantly adopt a taxonomic approach to categorising products, leading to a clear separation between animal and plant-based foods. Interestingly, exposure to a vegan dietary lifestyle had minimal effects on perception, with no significant influence on overall trends. Moreover, the findings indicate that gender plays a notable role in shaping attitudes towards dairy alternatives. Specifically, females exhibit higher receptiveness to plant-based dairy alternatives compared to males. Conversely, other consumer characteristics do not appear to significantly impact attitudes towards or willingness to substitute traditional dairy products.
This study highlights the continued differentiation between dairy alternatives and traditional products in consumer perception, suggesting a need for further efforts to bridge this gap. Additionally, the observed gender-based differences imply that targeted strategies could be valuable in promoting the adoption of plant-based proteins.

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Esser Jeanne (2023). Consumers Perception of Environmental Friendliness and Purchasing of Organic Products

An adaption of consumer behaviour to more sustainable food choices is crucial to mortise the growing population and its increasing environmental impact when it comes to food production. Organic production could be one way to produce more sustainable food as the production occurs without pesticides and mineral fertilizer, which leads to less nitrate losses in the environment.
Consumers perception about environmental friendliness of different food products was analysed. Results suggest that animal proteins are considered to be more environmentally harmful than vegetables. However, the distance travelled seemed to be more important to the consumers perception of environmental friendliness of food than the production type. Consumers believe that locally produced vegetables are environmentally friendly even though there is a lot of energy used for greenhouse heating. Also, soja-based meat substitutes were wrongly considered to be more environmentally harmful than organic meat, which may occur due to a lot of controversy around deforestation. Organic meat was considered more environmentally friendly than conventionally produced meat.
The perception of the environmental friendliness of conventionally produced meat had an impact on consumption and purchasing motivation of consumers. However, the market share of organic products in Switzerland is still very small, as well as the percentage of vegetarians. This leads to the conclusion that perception of the environmental impact of different foods is not the only factor influencing consumer’s food choices and that intentions and the actual behaviour of consumers do not necessarily correlate.Therefore, to shift consumption towards more organic products, it is not only important to consider the perception of the environmental impact of different foods but also factors such as price, health, and simple heuristics.

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Galli Debora (2023). Ocean-based or land-based salmon farming? – consumers' perception, willingness to buy and willingness to eat

Land-based salmon farming, which involves raising salmon from egg to harvest in controlled tanks on land, could help close the gap between the salmon supply and the increasing salmon demand. As land-based salmon farming represents a rela@vely newer method of salmon farming it is important to gain deeper insights into consumers’ percep@on of both the landbased salmon product and the land-based salmon farming method in comparison to the ocean-based salmon product and ocean-based salmon farming method. To bridge the
research gap surrounding the comparison of land-based salmon to ocean-based salmon, this study aimed at inves@ga@ng consumers’ percep@on, willingness to buy, and willingness to eat by comparing land-based salmon farming to ocean-based salmon farming. Further, the study wants to explore if consumers’ views of salmon farming and produc@on differ when comparing par@cipants’ evalua@ons of ocean-based salmon farming and land-based salmon farming in different countries. Addi@onally, the study tried to iden@fy what influences and predicts the par@cipants’ willingness to buy and willingness to eat land-based salmon.

An online survey was conducted by recrui@ng 298 German-speaking Swiss ci@zens. To be able to compare par@cipants’ evalua@ons of ocean-based-salmon farming and land-based salmon farming in different countries, par@cipants were randomly allocated into two groups. Group 1 had to compare ocean-based salmon farming in Norway to land-based salmon farming in Norway and Group 2 had to compare ocean-based salmon farming in Norway to land-based salmon farming in Switzerland. When asked about spontaneous associa@ons toward both farming methods, par@cipants used similar terms and categories and expressed nega@ve feelings toward ocean-based salmon farming and land-based salmon farming. The percep@on of the salmon produc@on as well as the salmon product itself was found to significantly influences the willingness to buy in Group 1 (b=0.634, p<0.001) and Group 2 (b=0.693, p<0.001) as well as significantly influencing the willingness to eat in Group 1 (b=0.628, p<0.001) and Group 2 (b=0.676, p<0.001). Par@cipants who perceived land-based salmon more posi@vely than ocean-based salmon were more willing to buy and eat land-based salmon. Addi@onally, the food technology neophobia nega@vely influences (b=-0.123, p=0.041) the willingness to eat of par@cipants from Group 2. No significant difference was found in percep@on (p=0.486), willingness to buy (p=0.082) and willingness to eat (p=0.096) when comparing the two groups. However, trust in people that work with land-based salmon in Switzerland was significantly higher than in people that work with the same type of salmon in Norway (p=0.002).

The results highlight the limited knowledge par@cipants have of ocean-based salmon farming and land-based salmon farming. In addi@on, the informa@on about salmon farming provided in this study is very licle. More and improved informa@on about land-based salmon farming could change consumers’ percep@on, willingness to buy, and willingness to eat. Focusing on the posi@ve aspects of land-based salmon farming may counteract the nega@ve effect of the food technology neophobia on consumers’ willingness to buy and eat.

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Guion Seraina (2023). The Influence of Green Packaging and Cardboard Material on Consumer Perception of Food Products

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the effect of packaging on how consumers evaluate food. Previous research shows that packaging plays an essential role in product marketing and significantly impacts how consumers perceive products and affects their purchasing decisions. However, the influence of material and color of food packaging on the perception of food products has not yet been researched in sufficient detail. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine whether a green color design and cardboard material packaging would influence consumers’ perceptions of food content in terms of sustainability, health, taste, consumption, and price. The questions of this study were investigated and answered by means of an online survey with pictures. Four different packaging versions of a total of eight food products were created, resulting in 24 images to be evaluated. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups and had to rate 12 images. The participants had to rate the food on a 6-point Likert scale in the categories sustainability, health, taste, consumption and price. The results show that cardboard packaging led participants to rate the food products as more sustainable and more expensive than plastic-packaged food. It was also shown that a green color design on the packaging led participants to perceive the food as healthier than food packaged in neutral colors. The dairy products however represent an exception to this observation, where participants gave a preferable rating to a neutral color scheme. This could be due to the fact that the neutral packaging for dairy products was blue and the blue color, unlike the green color, evoked more appropriate associations such as freshness and coolness. The results of the study also showed a significant interaction of ecological mindset and food perception, since participants with a lower ecological mindset rated the products significantly higher in the categories: sustainability, healthiness, tastiness and willingness to consume than participants with a higher ecological attitude.

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Kosanak Aycan (2023). Unveiling Consumer Sentiments: Taking a closer look at different cultivated meats

Cultured meat has emerged as a promising alternative to conventional meat, offering sustainable and ethical benefits while addressing the challenges of traditional animal agriculture. This alternative caters especially to meat loving consumers. However, meat alternatives are facing overall low acceptance levels, with cultured meat being no exception. This thesis aims to investigate consumer acceptance of different cultured meat types (chicken, beef, pork) and its conventional counterparts as no study has done this before. In addition, potential disparities in consumer acceptance of cultured meat based on sociodemographic characteristics, consumer perceptions of each protein source and consumer characteristics will be explored. For this purpose, first a literature review on this topic was carried out followed by a data analysis of a comprehensive online survey assessing consumer perceptions and acceptance of alternative protein sources in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The findings confirmed that overall acceptance of cultured meat was significantly lower compared to conventional meat, in line with previous research. Examining sociodemographic characteristics, age and gender were identified as significant predictors of consumer acceptance. Older individuals and female consumers exhibited lower acceptance ratings. On the contrary, education did not show any significance. Consumer perceptions of taste, naturalness, and environmental friendliness were especially critical predictors of cultured meat acceptance. Further, familiarity with meat alternatives proved to be a driver and consumers preference for naturalness in food a barrier of consumer acceptance. Food neophobia on the other hand showed no significance. Finally, meat type did not play a crucial role in shaping consumer acceptance. By considering these findings, stakeholders can devise effective strategies to foster higher consumer acceptance and pave the way for the successful integration of cultured meat into mainstream markets. As cultured meat technology continues to evolve, consumer education, targeted marketing, and transparent communication about its characteristics and benefits will be key in bridging the acceptance gap and achieving widespread adoption of this innovative and sustainable food source.

Lazarevski Jan (2023). Consumer perception of cell-based fish

Fish is a healthy food with omega-3 fatty acids, proteins, trace elements, and vitamins. However, it also contains heavy metals, antibiotics, foodborne pathogens, and microplastics. Furthermore, environmental friendliness as well as animal welfare are heavy concerns in the current fish production. Novel fish, i.e., plant-based and cell-based fish, offer promising alternatives to these issues. But how ready are consumers for these new foods? The goal of this study is to analyze consumer perception of cell-based salmon in comparison to plant-based and conventional salmon, i.e., from aqua-culture and wild-catch. The perception was assessed on the acceptance measures of perceived healthiness, animal welfare, environmental friendliness, and willingness to buy. Additionally, the influences on these acceptance measures were examined using sociodemographic and dietary factors as well as the four scales: Fish Attachment, Cur-tailing Behavior, Knowledge, and Animal Attitude. An online survey with N = 160 par-ticipants was conducted in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The data was analyzed using Friedman’s Test, Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc tests, correlations, and re-gression analyses. Conventional salmon was significantly preferred over novel salmon in the measures of perceived healthiness and willingness to buy. Plant-based salmon was favored in the context of animal welfare. For environmental friendliness, the rat-ings were indifferent. The scales explained most of the variance and correlated signif-icantly with the acceptance measures of conventional salmon. However, the influences on the acceptance measures of novel salmon remained unclear. While the cell-based salmon was generally less favored, there were no clear behavioral, sociodemographic, or dietary links to these perceptions. Considering the environmental and animal wel-fare benefits of cell-based fish, these aspects should be emphasized to improve the consumer perception of cell-based fish.

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Meyer Alice (2023). A closer look at consumers' food storage habits and handling of food to prevent household food waste

Food waste leads to a loss of resources and energy and has adverse effects on the environment. In Switzerland, a considerable amount of food waste and its environmental impacts are attributed to private households. This sector is particularly complex to tackle, as various behavioural factors, attitudes and external factors influence the consumers’ behaviour. For this reason, household food waste poses a major challenge. This study aimed at determining possible pathways that lead consumers to discard a food product they were originally willing to consume. To do so, the study focused on consumer attitudes, their storage behaviour, and their perception of edibility, that is, on the perception of whether a product is safe to eat. We analysed how these factors affect the amount of food waste and the contribution of different food groups to food waste in the chosen sample. In an online survey with 123 participants from Switzerland, we found a total of 250 g of avoidable food waste per person and per week. Most waste was found in edible peels, followed by leftovers, fruit and vegetables, bakery products, and dairy products. The participants stored the tested products correctly, which reflects their high Environmental Concern and high Intention to Avoid Food Waste, combined with their high educational level. In terms of edibility, for about half of the tested products there was no significant difference between how long participants would consume the product at most (preference) and how long they thought it was actually safe to eat (knowledge). This indicates that there was no value-action gap for those products, which is in line with the sample’s high Intention to Avoid Food Waste and the low Amount of Food Waste measured. For the other products, the values of the preference were significantly lower than the values of the knowledge on edibility. This was interpreted as the consumers ability to use up these products well before the expiry date to avoid spoilage. The results on edibility also suggest that a high Intention to Avoid Food Waste and a low Perceived Health Risk can result in the consumption of food products that may be harmful to health. This potential trade-off between minimizing food waste and health hazards must be considered and appropriately addressed when informing consumers about food waste. The consumers’ correct storage behaviour and their perception of edibility might be relevant factors for lowering the amounts of household food waste. To tackle food waste in the future, information campaigns should promote the employment of correct storage techniques to reduce household food waste. In addition, we recommend these campaigns address the edibility of food products. This could be done by raising the awareness that date-labels and expert recommendations are rather conservative and that food products can sometimes be consumed even longer. Nonetheless, it is important to distinguish between foods that can pose a serious risk to health and those that are safe to eat. To investigate the applicability of the findings, further research is required in a broader sample, since this sample was well-educated and environmentally concerned, and thus, is not representative for the general population. Further examination of the storage behaviour and perception of edibility in a more general group of consumers might provide valuable insights on efficient measures for reducing household food waste.

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Priess Jana Katharina (2023). Is a lower consumption of fruit and vegetable associated with a higher BMI? An analysis of Body Scan Data from 2019 and 2021

Fruit and vegetables are essential in the diet and are beneficial for health. Numerous national and international institutions, such as the Swiss Society for Nutrition, recommend an intake of five portions of fruit and vegetable per day. Generally, only a few people comply with this, and possible risk factors such as weight gain, some cancers, and coronary heart diseases occur with insufficient intake. Due to low fruit and vegetable intake, chances of being overweight or obese increase. This study examines if low fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with a higher body mass index in a Swiss study sample. Participants (n = 102) were invited twice, in October 2019 and July to November 2021, to complete a questionnaire and participate in a bioelectrical impedance analysis. The results show that fruit and vegetables significantly predict BMI, physical activity, and gender in 2019 and 2021. Body mass index and visceral adipose tissue differed significantly in gender. Furthermore, women were significantly eating more fruit and vegetables than men, and total fruit and vegetable consumption increased non-significantly from 2019 to 2021. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the effect fruit and vegetables have on body mass index, visceral adipose tissue, and waist circumference. Ultimately, more attention must be given to adequate fruit and vegetable intake, and interventions are required to increase the intake.

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Przygienda Zoe (2023). Labels and Consumer Behavior - How the Nutri-Score Influences the Perceived Healthiness of Bread and Plant-Based Meat Alternatives

Nutritional labels on food products have a considerable impact on the purchase decisions consumers make. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the Nutri-Score (NuSc) on a product’s perceived healthiness. An online questionnaire showing pictures of breads and plant-based meat alternatives was used to understand three phenomena of interest. These included testing if the labels of comparison products positioned next to a product with NuSc C affect the consumers’ evaluation of this item. Moreover, the perceived healthiness of said product was investigated by differentiating participants who pay attention to eating a healthy balanced diet and those who do not, as well as the group of people who considered the NuSc during the survey and those who did not. The results demonstrated that a positive contrast effect, rather than an anchoring effect, regarding perceived healthiness can be shown for some scenarios, but not all, in which a product with NuSc C is placed next to items with a NuSc B or D. Perceived healthiness was clearly linked to participants’ diets. However, a conscious consideration of the label did not significantly influence the evaluation of products.

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Scherer Michaela (2023). Variety on the Plate - How do consumers perceive variety?

A varied diet is generally perceived as positive, as it counteracts malnutrition as well as macro- and micronutrient deficiencies. In contrast, however, a varied diet also means that more is eaten, which can lead to increased energy intake when certain foods such as carbohydrate-containing foods are consumed. This is explained by habituation which relates to the quantity of food consumed and termination of eating (Epstein et al., 2009). It leads to both benefits and challenges when it comes to dietary variety.
This paper examines how human individuals evaluate the visual presentation of meals on plates regarding their variety by rating photographs. Through an online questionnaire, in which consumers were asked to rate 21 photos of assembled meals according to their variety, the consumers’ perception of variety was measured. It included photos of components from three different food groups: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Vegetables. Every component was individually varied in three characteristic sensory properties, namely colour, shape, and texture. Additionally included in the online survey were questions on validated food scales to measure consumers' attitudes in their eating behaviours.
The structure of the meal photos enabled the measurement of the perception of dietary variety on a scale ranging from 1 (not varied at all) to 100 (very varied). The results of the survey confirmed that the perception of variety is significantly lower for meals with two food groups than for meals with more than two food groups: Meals containing two food groups scored between 31 and 36, while those containing three food groups scored between 47 and 67. Altering sensory properties partly influenced the perception of variety.
In conclusion, the meal photos with more food groups and more sensory changes were perceived as more varied, except the shape changes. These differences may be related to the attribution of importance to individual factors on the one hand, or on the other they might origin in individual preferences or characteristics.
Results obtained by this bachelors’ thesis may be useful in the development of strategies to battle eating disorders. For instance, less variable meals could be implemented to subconsciously lower caloric intake. Nevertheless, further research on the topic of dietary variety is essential to improve our understanding of how consumers perceive and define dietary variety. More studies in this field might validate these findings for practical application.

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Schmitter Sarah (2023). Impact of the Diet on the Body Composition

Nowadays, it becomes more and more important to take preventative public interventions against obesity as it is strongly linked to an increased risk for the development of chronic diseases like cardiometabolic disease or diabetes. Different aspects like age, sex, lifestyle, diet, and physical activity play an important role in impacting the human body composition. Low meat consumption, a generally high protein diet, and low carbohydrate diets can be beneficial in lowering the risk of overweight and obesity. Furthermore, several reasons lead to the need of reducing meat intake, like environmental factors or human health. The goal of this thesis is to examine whether a change in meat, protein, and carbohydrate consumption influences the skeletal muscle mass (SMM), relative fat mass (RFM), and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and therefore affects the human anthropometry in a Swiss study sample. Hence, a self-reported semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire (sFFQ) and the results of a bioelectrical impedance analysis of N = 107 participants was analyzed. Additionally, the participants were separated into groups relating to their change in consumption (2021 (T2) – 2019 (T1)) (decreased, no change, increased meat, protein, and carbohydrate consumption) and compared to each other. When evaluating the anthropometric variables SMM, RFM, and VAT, solely VAT was lower in T2. However, within the groups, this change in VAT was only significant for the participants that increased their meat consumption or did not change their protein or carbohydrate consumption. The change in the meat, protein, and carbohydrate consumption groups had no significant effect on SMM, RFM, and VAT. In conclusion, considering this Swiss study sample, a change in meat, protein, and carbohydrate consumption between T2 and T1 only impacted VAT within the different consumption change groups.

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Baur Manuela (2022). Impact of the Nutri-Score label on consumers’ perceptions of ultra-processed products

Previous research revealed that consumers' perception of healthiness can be influenced by personal factors, product characteristics and by additional information on products such as front-of-pack labels. However, there are still gaps on how some personal characteristics or certain labels influence the perception of healthiness of ultra-processed products. Furthermore, as far as we know, the perceived processing degree of ultra-processed products has been little investigated. This study therefore aims to investigate how labels, in this case the Nutri-Score, but also personal factors such as gender, age, nutrition knowledge and trust in the food industry, influence the perceived healthiness and perceived processing degree of ultra-processed foods. In addition, the present study wants also to investigate whether the perception of healthiness is correlated with the perception of processing degree. This was done by means of an online survey where consumers had to evaluate the perceived healthiness and the perceived processing degree of 19 processed products. The results showed that the Nutri-Score did not have a significant impact on the perceived healthiness and perceived processing degree of ultra-processed products, regardless of consumers’ familiarity with the label. However, the overall perceived healthiness of products seemed to be influenced significantly by gender and trust in the food industry but not by age or nutrition knowledge. With regard to the processing degree, instead, none of the variables analyzed seemed to have an influence on its perception. Lastly, the results also showed that the perception of healthiness was negatively correlated with the perception of processing degree.

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Cavin Angèle (2022). The influence of colors on disgust

Disgust is a basic emotion that helps avoiding contamination and diseases from foods (Olatunji et al., 2007). The intensity of disgust can vary between individuals and may be influenced by external factors, especially visual cues. Visual cues in foods, such as the color of food, can influence the expectation and taste perception of people (Spence et al., 2010). Even though the link between colors in food and taste perception has been studied for decades, there is a lack of clear answers regarding the potential effects of color and disgust perception.
In this study, the aim was to examine the influence of color on disgust perception. We expected that food shaded in green would be perceived as more disgusting than the identical food items in their natural color or colored in red. Previous research (Olatunji et al., 2007) showed that people differ in their individual perception of disgust, but there is a lack of research investigating if people with different levels of disgust sensitivity would respond differently to color variations of food. We also expected that the individual disgust sensitivity of the participants would be positively correlated to the disgust perception of the green food items. Finally, we expected women to have a higher disgust sensitivity than men.
We conducted an online questionnaire (N=248 participants) with 2 conditions (green and natural/red and natural) with both 2 sub-versions with interchanged coloration of the specific food items to control for a potential influence of the items. In every version there were 2 colored food items and 2 control food items. The participants were randomly assigned to the conditions. The participants first had to answer some demographic questions and then proceeded to rate the 4 food items (2 rotten and 2 non rotten) based on their attractiveness and how disgusting they looked. Finally, the participants also had to answer questions from different scales (Food disgust scale (FDS, Hartmann & Siegrist, 2018), Disgust propensity and sensitivity scale revised (DPSS-R, Olatunji et al., 2007) and a self-generated supertaster scale.
The results show that pictures of food items shaded in green or red have a significantly higher disgust rating and a lower attractiveness rating than the same food items in their natural color (p<.001). Pictures of food items shaded in green also have a higher disgust rating and a lower attractiveness rating than the same food items shaded in red (p<.001). The results also show that the FDS and DPSS-R correlate positively with the disgust rating of the rotten food items. This means that participants with a higher individual level of disgust rated the pictures as more disgusting. There is almost no correlation between FDS and DPSS-R score and disgust rating of non-rotten food items. Women were found to have higher FDS and DPSS-R scores than men (FDS: p<.002, DPSS-R: p=.062), therefore showing a higher disgust sensitivity level than men.

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Ehrbar Stefanie (2022). The influence of perceived stress on food intake and diet quality

In situations of perceived stress, people tend to adjust their eating behavior in ways that are not always beneficial for their health, either for time management reasons or simply due to food cravings. Recent studies have shown that people, especially those who are overweight, tend to eat more in stressful situations and higher stress levels result in intra-day food-cravings and higher perceived food intake. To adapt these findings on a population-based level, this study evaluated the longitudinal study Swiss Food Panel 2.0. Self-reported food consumption and self-reported perceived stress were examined for relationships and the factors BMI and age were controlled for interactions.
In women, higher perceived stress significantly predicted higher overall food intake and higher sweet and salty snack intake. No significant results could be detected for men. A higher BMI significantly predicted a lower diet quality score for men and women. A higher BMI predicts a diet with fewer fruits, vegetables, and salad, and more meat and meat products. These findings indicate that women are more prone to stress eating than men, especially when it comes to sweets and salty snacks. Stress, overconsumption of food and weight gain can lead to hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. These are among the main predictors for cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, good stress management or stress reduction should be a personal goal as well an interest for health insurance companies.

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Jimenez Ramirez Isabel (2022). The influence of personality on food disgust perception - Analyses of the relationship between disgust sensitivity and personality traits, political orientation, and conventionalism

Disgust accompanies us from the beginning of our lives. But why are we disgusted and what affects disgust sensitivity? These and other questions will be explored in this thesis. Three possible variables (personality traits, political orientation and conventionalism) that influence disgust are investigated. Furthermore, the relevance of food disgust in the food industries is analysed with interviews.
Participants of a survey were asked about their personality, political orientation, need for security and esteem for traditions (conventionalism). The Food Disgust Scale-short version (FDS-s), Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised (DPSS-R), perceived disgust scale, Big Five questionnaire, Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) and Kurzskala Autoritarismus (KSA-3) are used for evaluation purposes. The results show that participants with a higher level of openness reported a lower level of perceived disgust. Conversely, participants with a higher level of neuroticism reported a perceived higher level of disgust. The high disgust sensitivity of neurotic people was explained by the strong need for security through mediation. Political orientation and conventionalism showed no correlation with disgust in our data. The possible underlying reason is that too few participants were old and right-wing orientated.
Additionally, interviews were conducted with two product developers from the company Angst AG Zürich and Bio-Familia AG to examine the relevance of disgust in the food industry. The interviews with the experts demonstrated that disgust plays only an implicit role in the food industry. No frequent disgust scale is used. Information about personality traits is not considered in the chain of product development.

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Odermatt Ladina (2022). What’s the matter with household chemicals? - Identifying factors that increase the risk of unintentional injuries in preschoolers caused by chemical household products

Injuries caused by household chemicals are a public health threat that affect children under the age of five in particular. A wide range of intersecting approaches can be found in literature, which explain how such incidents may occur and how potential intervention programs could look. The focus in this bachelor thesis is placed on the packaging attributes color and cartoon illustration and how those influence preschoolers’ hazard perception of household chemicals. The goal was to contribute to the existing research and propose precautionary measures by investigating further aspects of packaging design that may mislead preschoolers about product safety. It was expected that bright colors, as well as child-appealing cartoon illustrations, would not only attract the attention of preschoolers, but lead them to believe the product is safe for children to use. To investigate these hypotheses, a sorting task was carried out with sixteen different household chemicals that can commonly be bought in Swiss supermarkets. In that task, 114 preschoolers aged between thirtyfive and fifty-five months were invited to categorize all household chemicals individually into one of two categories, based on who they think should use those products. The preschoolers had to choose whether each product could only be used by adults or whether the product is safe for children to use under the supervision of a grownup. The collected data was then analyzed for significance in R Studio using a Chi-squared test. It was found that bright colors do not mislead preschoolers about product safety. Household chemicals with brightly colored packaging were significantly more often categorized as products that should only be used by adults. In contrast, however, it was found that household chemicals with child-friendly cartoons on the packaging are perceived as less dangerous by preschoolers. It is therefore recommended, to use bright colors, but to avoid child-appealing cartoons when designing packaging for household chemicals.

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Morscher Sophie Anne (2022). Animal welfare and the organic market - A systematik review

Background and research goal: The expansion of intensive animal production systems has increased consumers’ concerns regarding animal welfare. Hence, consumers’ interests in production systems that offer high animal welfare levels, like the organic production system, has increased. This paper pursued two goals: first, to investigate how consumers in Europe perceive animal welfare and, second, to assess the influence of consumers’ perceptions and preferences regarding animal welfare on the organic animal market.

Scope and approach: In total, 22 studies were selected for a systematic review.

Key findings and conclusions: The results suggest that consumers perceive animal welfare in husbandries mostly with animals being able to behave as naturally as possible. Consumers were generally not aware of the superiority of animal welfare levels in the organic production system when compared to other production systems. To increase the organic animal market share, emphasizing natural behaviour possibilities of husbandry animals and providing information on the high animal welfare level of the organic production system, both by using labels with texts and the media, were revealed as promising marketing approaches.

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Visco Sara (2022). Introducing microalgae-based foods in Singapore: First insights into consumers’ perceptions and needs

The cultivation of microalgae (MA) —which are associated with nutritional, health, and sustainability benefits—could contribute to a sizable portion of Singapore’s future domestic food supply. However, consumer research aligning demand and supply is needed to maximize the future acceptance of novel MA-based food products. Therefore, the current study aims to establish a basic understanding of Singaporean consumers’ perceptions and needs related to MA-based foods. To this end, interviews were conducted using a Singaporean sample (N = 19). The interviews were transcribed and analysed by adopting qualitative analysis techniques. The results show that participants associated MA and MA-based foods with healthy, nutritious food and had a neutral feeling with that association. All the participants would be willing to try MA foods, but most would not consume them regularly. The motives for consuming such products were linked to the novel concept and the nutritional benefit. The most significant barriers were related to the unfamiliar taste/texture and the expected high price of the products. In addition, the food categories “snack” and “grains/cereals” were considered the most suited for MA foods, with products such as chips, biscuits, noodles, and bread. In contrast, meat and fish alternatives with MA were considered less suitable because of the negative connotation towards alternatives in general. Thus, it is recommended to promote the novelty and nutritional benefits of MA-based foods and to create products in the mentioned suited categories. To conclude, these results are intended to assist a subsequent quantitative study and serve as a good starting point for finding relevant variables.

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Cino Sara (2021). Labels and Consumer Behavior

Previous research confirmed that packaging and labelling have a big influence on consumer perception and purchase behavior (e.g., Egnell et al., 2020). Recently, it was for example found across several countries that the NUTRISCORE is perceived as helpful for making healthy product choices (Talati et al., 2019). Labels like the NUTRISCORE display on a range of letters (A – E) & colors (red, orange …. green) the healthiness of the product via highlighting the respective letter/color. This graded system suggests that consumers’ purchase behavior should gradually vary – the “better” the color, the more likely people should choose the product. However, it remains to be systematically tested, how the healthiness of a non-labeled product is judged in comparison to the same product with a label indicating a rather unhealthy content (e.g., Label D/ orange colored). Thus, research is needed to determine the specific conditions under which labeled products are judged to be better (e.g., healthier) or worse than their label-free counterparts. Kessler et al. (2010) reported two different kind of judgmental modes that can be used in social situations; absolute vs. graded standards. Applying this approach to the evaluation of products could help investigate and explain, how gradually labeled products vs. label-free products are judged by consumers.

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Contiero Robin (2021). Consumer's prejudices of alcohol-free beer

The presented study investigated if and how beer consumers judge other consumers that drink non-alcoholic beer (NAB) compared to alcoholic beer (AB). The study consisted of an online survey conducted in Germany. The participants (N = 509) were asked to evaluate either a male or a female person, who was described as ordering either an AB or an NAB in a restaurant, using 14 bipolar adjective pairs. A two (male/female respondent) by two (male/female target) by two (NAB/AB) between-subjects experiment was conducted that showed significant differences in perception of the targets, based on the ordered beer type. This effect was revealed for eight adjective pairs, two of which were additionally influenced by the target gender.
In a second part, regression analyses of several Likert-type scales as predictors of NAB consumption showed, that taste expectations, social norms, and health consciousness have a considerable impact on willingness to drink NAB. The analyses revealed that taste expectations and social norms are main drivers for lower willingness to drink NAB as well as a lower consumption amount, while health consciousness was associated with greater willingness to drink NAB and a higher consumption amount. Despite great reservations about taste, NAB and its consumers are associated with many positive traits. However, this positive image is clouded by established norms, which need to be reconsidered to make way for a wider adoption of this healthy beer alternative.

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Cremona Michelle (2021). Can we provoke disgust? – The effect of animal origin of food on feeling disgusted

The presented study investigated if and how beer consumers judge other consumers that drink non-alcoholic beer (NAB) compared to alcoholic beer (AB). The study consisted of an online survey conducted in Germany. The participants (N = 509) were asked to evaluate either a male or a female person, who was described as ordering either an AB or an NAB in a restaurant, using 14 bipolar adjective pairs. A two (male/female respondent) by two (male/female target) by two (NAB/AB) between-subjects experiment was conducted that showed significant differences in perception of the targets, based on the ordered beer type. This effect was revealed for eight adjective pairs, two of which were additionally influenced by the target gender.
In a second part, regression analyses of several Likert-type scales as predictors of NAB consumption showed, that taste expectations, social norms, and health consciousness have a considerable impact on willingness to drink NAB. The analyses revealed that taste expectations and social norms are main drivers for lower willingness to drink NAB as well as a lower consumption amount, while health consciousness was associated with greater willingness to drink NAB and a higher consumption amount. Despite great reservations about taste, NAB and its consumers are associated with many positive traits. However, this positive image is clouded by established norms, which need to be reconsidered to make way for a wider adoption of this healthy beer alternative.

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de Raemy Stéphanie (2021). Nutri-Score and judgmental biases: effect on perceived healthiness

The Nutri-Score is a voluntary front-of-package nutrition label (FoPLs), which helps consumers assess the healthiness of food and enables them to easily compare two products within a category. A product is evaluated and characterized by a color and letter, ranging from a green A to a red E. Much research has already been carried out on the impact of the Nutri-Score on a product, but rarely in the presence of other items. Hence, this study attempts to determine if surrounding products influence the perceived healthiness of a product with the Nutri-Score C and the willingness to buy it, due to judgmental biases.
An online experimental survey was conducted, in which participants (N = 306) had to estimate the nutritional quality of a product with the Nutri-Score category C. Three products with different Nutri-Score categories were presented at the same time. Two products with the Nutri-Score C were analyzed once next to items with Nutri-Scores A and B and once next to items with Nutri-Scores D and E. Participants were randomly assigned to a labeled or unlabeled condition.
The surrounding products did not significantly influence the perception of healthiness of the products with the Nutri-Score C. No differences were highlighted between the ABC and CDE condition except for the estimation of sugar, where the products were seen as healthier in the ABC condition. This demonstrates an anchoring effect. Moreover, products in Nutri-Score category C were perceived as significantly heathier with the label than without it, in the case of the sugar content (p = 0.019), overall healthiness (p = 0.005) and variables’ aggregation (p = 0.035). For the willingness-to-buy, no significant differences were observed between the ABC and CDE conditions (p = .126) and neither did the label have any effect (p = .629).
In conclusion, the surrounding products have no influence on the perception of healthiness in general, but if there is an influence, then it points towards an anchoring effect. The findings suggest that either participants did not consider the Nutri-Score for the evaluation or factors such as familiarity with the products and knowledge reduced the anchoring effect to a non-significant level.

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Derron Julie (2021). Laypeople's perception of natural vs. synthetic chemicals in consumer products

Laypeople show a substantial preference for natural chemicals in consumer products. However, the extent of this preference in different types of products has not been intensely studied. Therefore, a study with 546 respondents from the German-speaking Swiss population was conducted to identify and compare consumer preferences for natural chemicals in five product categories (food and beverages, medication, personal care products, household cleaning products and clothing). Preferences for natural chemicals, perceived effectiveness, health and environmental risks of natural versus synthetic chemicals in the products and affect towards natural and synthetic chemicals were measured. ANOVA showed that respondents’ preference for natural chemicals was significantly high in food and beverages, followed by preferences in personal care products. Compared to synthetic chemicals, natural chemicals were perceived to be significantly safer for human health in food and beverages, while natural chemicals in household cleaning products were perceived least environmentally harmful. In contrast, synthetic chemicals were perceived slightly more effective than natural chemicals in all product categories except clothing. Multiple regression analysis revealed that gender, health risk and effectiveness perception had a significant positive influence, while affect towards synthetic chemicals had a significant negative influence on respondents’ preferences for natural chemicals in different products. Environmental risk perception only had a significant positive influence on consumer preferences in personal care products, while affect towards natural chemicals only displayed a significant positive influence in food and beverages. The results of the present study suggest that consumer preferences for natural chemicals are product-dependent involving a variety of other factors, such as affect and perception.

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Dolder Patrizia (2021). Consumers’ perceived risk elicited by warning labels on wine and vodka bottles

The risks of alcohol are often underestimated, therefore, stronger alcohol policies have been discussed for several years now. One such method is the depiction of health warning labels (HWLs) on alcoholic beverages. An online between-subject experiment was conducted in the German-speaking part of Switzerland (N = 508). The alcoholic beverages chosen for the present study were wine, which has a unique role in Swiss culture, and vodka. The results showed that the HWL did not make a difference in the risk perception of alcohol. Nevertheless, between the two types of alcoholic beverages, a distinction was observed. The risk of wine was considered lower in comparison to vodka. The acceptance of the HWL was dependent on the type of alcoholic beverage and higher for vodka. Reactance to the HWL on the frontside of the alcoholic beverages was stronger, inducing a stronger rejection of the HWL, on bottles of wine. Further, the present study assessed the perceived effectiveness of the HWL, which was lower for wine compared to vodka.

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Giacomini Fiona (2021). Nutrition Knowledge of Athletes: A Literature Review

The present literature review examines the role of different characteristics of athletes (gender, level of athlete, attendance of nutrition course, sport type) with regard to their general nutrition knowledge and the relationship between the athletes’ nutrition knowledge and their dietary behavior. For the purpose of this literature research, articles published from 2010 onwards are included. The athletes’ age-range is set from 11 to 50 years. The athletes’ nutrition knowledge in the articles has to be measured by means of a questionnaire. A total of 43 articles meet the inclusion criteria and are therefore analyzed. Gender is found to play mainly no significant role regarding an athlete’s nutrition knowledge. The impact of the athletes' level and the sport type on nutrition knowledge cannot properly be analyzed due to lack of research. The attendance of a nutrition course enhances the athletes’ nutrition knowledge, as long as the course is conducted during the study (i.e. controlled nutrition intervention), whereas the past attendance of such course – without being accompanied by a study – is not equally effective. Generally, all the analyzed characteristics show mostly heterogeneous outcomes. This might be due to the heterogeneity of the used questionnaires. The finding that a controlled nutrition intervention can lead to a lasting, significantly higher nutrition knowledge is considered to be important as general nutrition knowledge of athletes is recorded to be inadequate. Furthermore, a positive correlation between dietary behavior and nutrition knowledge is found. Based on these findings, it is suggested to focus on the enhancement of athletes' nutrition knowledge in the long-term. A possible way to reach this could be a sound nutrition intervention. How such a course should be shaped could be analyzed in further research.

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Junghardt Beatrix (2021). Consumer’s Strategies for Assembling a Sustainable Meal: Results of a Think Aloud Fake Food Buffet Study

Food consumption has a major negative impact on the environment and by choosing food prod-ucts, consumers are main drivers for this impact and sustainable development (Grunert, 2011). However, the choosing process behind sustainable food choices is widely unstudied. This study examines, when consumers want to make sustainable food choices, which foods are chosen, how are foods chosen, why are foods chosen and which participants’ characteristics are associ-ated to this process. Participants (N = 169) had to assemble either a meal to their preference (control group) or environmental-friendliness (sustainability group) from a Fake Food Buffet. Participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts (Think-Aloud Method) while assorting the foods, which was audibly recorded. To conclude the experiment, participants filled out a ques-tionnaire. The weight, calorie- and protein content as well as the environmental impact (Eco-Points) of the “real foods” were calculated by the determined weights of the “fake foods”. The audio recordings enabled the assessment of the sequence of and reasons for participant’s food selection.
When participants had to assemble a sustainable meal, they achieved a more environmentally friendly meal, especially regarding carbohydrate, meat and fish products. They achieved to do so by selecting less grams of meat, choosing meat, fish and dessert later in the choosing pro-cess and choosing foods based on regionality, seasonality, organic production and the per-ceived sustainability. Regarding calorie and protein content as well as the total weight, the se-lected meals did not differ between the groups.
The results of this study show, that consumers have viable approaches for making sustainable food choices. However, the variety of approaches needs to be larger. Additionally, sustainable behavior should be incorporated into daily-food-decisions for achieving sustainable develop-ment, since this was not the case when assembling a meal only to the preferences.

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Leibundgut Celine (2021). Der Einfluss der Verpackung von chemischen Haushaltsprodukten auf die Risikowahrnehmung von Laien

Chemische Haushaltsprodukte werden in diversen Bereichen des alltäglichen Lebens wie Reinigungstätigkeiten eingesetzt (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, 2014; Tox Info Suisse, 2021b). Diese Produkte bieten nicht nur Vorteile, sondern sind bei falschem Umgang auch mit Risiken für die menschliche Gesundheit und die Umwelt verbunden. Vergiftungen in Schweizer Haushalten stehen oft in Zusammenhang mit Haushaltchemikalien, wobei deren Konzentration und Inhaltsstoffe bestimmen, wie gefährlich sie sind (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, 2014). Am häufigsten sind Kinder unter 5 Jahren von Expositionen mit Gift betroffen (Tox info Suisse, 2021c) und können somit zu den potenziell besonders gefährdeten Gruppen gezählt werden. Einer der bedeutendsten Ursachen dafür sind bunte Produktverpackungen und gut duftende, farbige Inhaltsstoffe, welche die Attraktivität für Kinder steigern (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, 2014). Trotz vieler Informationsquellen wie beispielsweise cheminfo.ch, eine Kampagne zum verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit chemischen Produkten (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, 2012) oder den Sicherheits- und Warnhinweisen auf den Produktverpackungen werden jährlich einige Vergiftungsfälle dokumentiert. Im Jahr 2020 wurden rund 9'170 Beratungsgespräche über die Tox Info Suisse Notfallnummer 145 zu chemischen Haushaltsprodukten geführt. Dabei wurden total 441 Vergiftungsfälle verzeichnet (Tox Info Suisse, 2021b). Die Dunkelziffer der nicht gemeldeten Fälle sind in dieser Zahl jedoch nicht inbegriffen. Folglich könnte die tatsächliche Anzahl an Vergiftungsfälle höher geschätzt werden. Diese Zahlen zeigen, dass ein bewusster Umgang mit chemischen Haushaltsprodukten besonders wichtig ist. Um zu verstehen, wie es jedoch zu einer solchen Anzahl an Vergiftungen kommen kann, spielt das Risikobewusstsein und -empfinden gegenüber diesen Produkten eine wichtige Rolle und sollte untersucht und optimal gefördert werden.

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Pernetta Laura (2021). Consumers’ perception of the nutritional values of plant-based meat, milk, and cheese alternatives

In recent years, the number of plant-based alternative products for meat, milk, and cheese has increased. These alternative products are a continually evolving trend, and therefore also economically relevant. However, until now only few studies have focused on the nutritional values and perceptions about plant-based alternatives. Are these comparable to our traditional meat, milk, and cheese products? This thesis (1) investigates crucial nutritional values and the healthiness of selected plantbased products, compares them to their counterpart of animal origin, and (2) aims to provide an insight of the consumers’ perception of the most important nutritional values and overall healthiness of said
products. For this purpose, an online survey (n = 273) was conducted. The cross-sectional data of the German-speaking part of Switzerland indicated that people rate plant-based meat alternatives to be healthier and containing more protein than meat products, while the opposite is the case for plantbased cheese alternatives. They were perceived to be less healthy, containing less protein, fat, salt, and less energy than cheese made from animal milk. Cow’s milk products were statistically more often perceived to be higher in fat and energy. However, consumers did not agree on which milk is healthier: the cow’s or the plant-based. Although people perceived statistical differences in the nutrient contents between animal products and their plant-based alternatives, the direct investigation and comparison of the actual nutritional values revealed only one statistically significant difference between the products: This remarkable difference has been found regarding the protein content in cheeses. Plantbased cheese alternatives contain almost no protein. Therefore, developing nutritionally balanced cheese alternatives should be a vital issue for future research.

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Schnoz Nicolas (2021). Die Wahrnehmung des Tieres in der Schweizer Bevölkerung und dessen Einfluss auf die Ernährungsform

Die Schweizer Bevölkerung setzt sich zunehmend mit dem Thema Ernährung auseinander. Das Tierwohl rückt dabei immer mehr in den Vordergrund und beeinflusst den Kaufentscheid. Diese Studie verfolgt das Ziel, die Frage zu beantworten, wie die Schweizer Bevölkerung die Tierarten Rind, Schwein und Huhn bezüglich subjektiver Wahrnehmung, Gefühls- und Emotionsempfindung, Denkvermögen und Intelligenz sowie bewusstem Handeln wahrnimmt und ob dies den Ernährungsstil der Leute beeinflusst. Um die Forschungsfrage zu beantworten, wurde ein quantitatives Forschungsdesign gewählt. Dabei wurden mittels Online-Fragebogen Daten von in der Schweiz wohnhaften Personen bezüglich ihrer Wahrnehmung des Tieres, ihres Ernährungsstils sowie persönliche Angaben erhoben und analysiert (N = 505). Um die Einstellung zum Fleisch zu analysieren, wurden Fragen zu den 4 Ns der Rechtfertigung, Fleisch zu essen sei notwendig, natürlich, normal und nice (Deutsch: schön), gestellt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Schweizer*innen Tieren grundsätzlich viel Mind zusprechen. Der Begriff Mind bedeutet in diesem Kontext die dem Tier zugesprochene Fähigkeit der subjektiven Wahrnehmung, Gefühls- und Emotionsempfindung, des Denkvermögens und der Intelligenz sowie des bewussten Handelns. Die Einstellung gegenüber der Tiernutzung hat einen Einfluss auf das Bild vom Tier. Dieses Bild vom Tier hat einen Effekt auf den Fleischkonsum, jedoch nicht auf die Bereitschaft jenen zu reduzieren. Vielmehr hat die wahrgenommene Notwendigkeit und der Genuss des Fleischkonsums einen Einfluss auf die Bereitschaft der Fleischkonsumreduktion. Die Einstellung gegenüber der Tiernutzung hat ebenfalls einen Einfluss auf den Fleischkonsum. Eine negativere Einstellung gegenüber der Tiernutzung hat einen reduzierten Konsum von Fleisch als Folge. Ebenfalls einen Einfluss auf den Fleischkonsum sowie auf die Bereitschaft den Fleischkonsum zu reduzieren hat das vierte der vier Ns, das nice, welches den reinen Genuss des Fleischverzehrs repräsentiert. Je höher der Genuss, umso mehr Fleisch wird konsumiert und umso weniger Prozent des Fleischkonsums sind Personen bereit mit Alternativprodukten zu substituieren. Dies zeigt auf, dass bei der Bereitschaft zur Fleischreduktion das Tier in den Hintergrund gedrängt wird und die Einstellung zum Fleisch eine zentralere Position einnimmt. Konsument*innen basieren ihren Entscheid wie viel Fleisch sie essen oder eben nicht essen, mehr auf den Genuss, den sie durch das Verzehren von Fleisch erlangen und auf das Fleisch an sich als auf das Tier, welches dahintersteht. Dies kann zur Konsequenz haben, dass auch wenn eine Person einem Tier viel Mind zuspricht, dies bei der Konsumentscheidung nicht gravierend ins Gewicht fällt und diese Person sich somit entgegen ihren Wertevorstellungen verhaltet. Weiterführende Forschung könnte den Einfluss der Werbung auf das Bild vom Tier und auf den Fleischkonsum untersuchen.

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Sgier Silvan (2021). In Vitro Meat: What do Consumers Associate it to and Can Framing Impact their Perception and Acceptance of it?

In vitro meat is a promising alternative to commercially produced meat with the potential to address several environmental, moral, and ethical concern about meat consumption. However, it is not well established yet and the consumer acceptance is rather low. Therefore, this study focused on consumer perceptions and acceptance of in vitro meat: how it is influenced with the concept of framing, which consumer characteristics are essential for its acceptance and what associations do the consumer have to in vitro meat. To achieve these objectives, an online survey was carried out with participants from Switzerland (N = 129). The participants were divided into three different groups, where each group corresponded to a framing type: (1) only verbal description of in vitro meat, (2) verbal description and visual product examples of in vitro meat in their packaging and (3) verbal description and the aforementioned product examples prepared in a dish.

The results have shown no significant differences between the three different groups with respect to the participants acceptance of in vitro meat. Regarding the associations that the participants made, the category “laboratory” was the most frequently mentioned association to in vitro meat. A difference in the association with a negative affect between the gender was apparent: females tended to have a disgust and unnaturalness concern about in vitro meat, where men made no association or asked themselves about the necessity of it. The attitude toward meat, the negative attitudes towards meat substitutes and the sustainability concern were significant predictors for the consumers acceptance of in vitro meat. In conclusion, the study showed that the technological aspect is dominant in the participants’ mind and the framing method used had no impact on the consumer acceptance of in vitro meat. Other studies, however, showed a positive effect on the acceptance of other novel foods with the illustration of real products of them. Therefore, the study suggests adopting the concept of the framing for further research but with a different illustration of the in vitro meat products to gain a better association of it and therefore increase its acceptance.

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Stampa Ronja (2021). Factors influencing consumer’s perceptions of microalgae food-products

Microalgae are a promising source of high-quality proteins and unsaturated fatty acids. Furthermore, by applying the right methods, they can be grown in a more sustainable way than many animal-based or plant-based protein sources. Little research has been done concerning the acceptance of microalgae food-products. Therefore, this study aims to address this research gap. An online survey was conducted with 162 participants from Switzerland and Germany. In a first part the first associa-tion and the affect people have towards microalgae food-products was examined. Moreover, the importance of different factors for buying such products, as well as the intention of buying different food products enriched with microalgae was evaluated. The influence of different health and sus-tainability related claims on the product’s packaging in relation to acceptance was also assessed. Finally, possible predictors for the affect were analyzed. Results show that the overall feeling towards microalgae food-products is rather neutral and most people associate them with its origin - the sea. Sustainability was seen as the most driving factor, whereas, innovation was the least important factor when buying a food product containing microalgae. Additionally, the intention of buying products enriched with microalgae in categories such as grain and supplement was the highest, whereas, in categories such as meat and fish it was the lowest. Only in case of bread spreads was a significant difference between claims observed, whereas, sustainability proved to be the most convincing claim. Finally, sustainability concerns were a minor predictor for the affect of the first association towards microalgae food-products.

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Umbricht Aliena (2021). What I eat in a day - a qualitative perspective on the promotion of healthy eating through social media

The influence of social media on society is growing. Consequently, more and more information on a huge variety of topics is looked up on platforms like Instagram and YouTube. On the one hand, statements and pictures shared on social media can lead to body comparison and dysfunctional eating patterns. On the other hand, social media can provide inspirational resources like food recipes, workout ideas or lifestyle hacks. As this content is mostly made by influencers, its reliability is not always given. An increasing trend on YouTube are videos in which influencers share their food intake for a whole day. The present study compares the amount of food eaten in videos of “what I eat in a day” with the guidelines of the Swiss Society for Nutrition for the calorie, protein, fat, carbohydrate, iron and calcium intake. The food is analysed with the help of the US Food Database and the Swiss Food Value Data Base. An omnivore diet was followed by most of the observed influencers. The vegan and vegetarian diet influencers in the observed videos were in the minority. None of the diets reach the number of calories recommended by the Swiss Society for Nutrition for the age group of 19- to-25-year-old females. This low-calorie intake may indicate that the influencers still follow the trend for a thin body ideal. Contrarily, every form of diet followed by the influencers exceeds the daily recommended fat intake. This excess of fat intake can also be seen in the Swiss population. Further studies could focus on the viewers; how they feel while watching these videos or how these videos directly influence their eating behavior.

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von Wyl Tabea (2021). How is food literacy measured? - a systematic review of existing instruments

Since food plays a big role in everyday life and can have great effects on health, it is important
to have decent knowledge of food. This knowledge is defined as “Food Literacy”. So as to know where and how food literacy needs improvement, there is a need for instruments that measure it.
Literature search on Web of Science and Scopus was conducted in order to find tools (questionnaires) that measure food literacy and nutrition literacy. The questionnaires were compared regarding country of development, targeted group, validation techniques, organization of the tool and number of items used in the questionnaire. Additionally, comparisons were made between studies aiming to measure food literacy, nutrition literacy and nutrition knowledge.
In total, 41 tools were identified. 13 of the tools aimed to measure nutrition knowledge, whereas another 13 aimed to measure nutrition literacy and the remaining 14 tools were constructed to measure food literacy. The goals of the individual tools vary widely. While some instruments focus on a specific target group (for example children in Iran), others aim to have a wide applicability. The number of items in the tools vary from five up to 137. Considering that there are not only cultural differences between countries, but also discrepancies in requirements of distinct populations, it is important to have several tools for these demands. Therefore, it is not yet possible to create a universal tool for which a worldwide application is possible.

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Bachmann Magdalena (2020). The Influence of Alcohol on Attention and Reaction Time during the Visual Attention Test of Menozzi et al.

Since the year 2000, milk consumption in Switzerland has declined steadily while the sector of milk alternatives is growing globally. However, there are only a few studies on the consumers' opinions on milk alternatives.

The goal of this thesis was to determine the consumers' perception of milk alternatives and how it differs from the perception of cow’s milk. To reach this goal, an online survey (N = 117) was conducted. Consumers that bought cow’s milk did not agree with the statement that milk alternatives taste good. They most often associated milk alternatives with soy milk which was rated poorly. There are some aspects which were not as well perceived in cow’s milk compared to milk alternatives by consumers that purchase cow’s milk. They agreed less with statements like “cow’s milk has few hormones and antibiotics”, “is good for the environment” or “is good for animal welfare” than they did for milk alternatives.

Consumers of milk alternatives, on the other hand, agreed more with the statement that milk alternatives taste good than they did for cow’s milk. Their most frequent association with milk alternatives is oat milk which also was the most consumed milk alternative in this study. Furthermore, oat milk also was the best-rated milk alternative for consumers of both types of milk and consumers of milk alternatives in the section of associations.

The most important aspects during the purchase of milk alternatives were taste, environmental friendliness and animal welfare. The most important aspect during the purchase of cow’s milk also was taste, followed by regional production and health.

Potential drivers of milk alternative consumption which can statistically explain the variance in milk alternative consumption the best are consumers’ opinion on milk alternatives, consumers’ opinion on cow’s milk and diet. The consumers’ opinion on milk alternatives can statistically explain 47% of the variance in milk alternative consumption, diet explains 30% and the consumers' opinion about cow’s milk explains 27%.

Oat milk seems to be the most popular milk alternative in the milk alternative consuming group and potentially the best-tasting milk alternative. Marketing it to the cow’s milk consuming population might boost sales numbers and consumer appreciation of milk alternatives. There should be advertising messages on the bottles of oat milk about health benefits for the cow’s milk consumers and messages about environmental friendliness for consumers of milk alternatives. There also should be messages about the taste on the bottle because this was the most important aspect during the purchase for both groups. These messages could be the most effective to increase sales.

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Burri Seline (2020). The consumer's perception of the healthiness of meat substitutes

In recent years, meat substitutes have had a vast growth in popularity and a powerful impact on the food selection in supermarkets (Slade 2018). Different technologies and innovations are constantly being improved, making the texture and appearance as meat-like as possible, making it more common for consumers to integrate meat substitutes into their daily meals.

With this said, many consumers still find it difficult to accept meat substitutes fully, since there is often a lot of doubt or lack of openness. Several factors interact with and influence this behavior, which is described in this paper and included in the questionnaire for further analysis. These factors include food neophobia, interest of naturalness, and food technology neophobia. A common explanation for food technology neophobia in context with meat substitutes is that the consumers do not have extensive knowledge of food technology and its related processes, and therefore tend to avoid processed foods, such as the meat substitute Planted.

After looking at this matter more closely, it became clear that educating consumers on food technologies does not necessarily alter their opinion on processed foods, or more precisely, meat substitutes. It did, however, show, that though studies (Martins et al. 2019) suggest, that naturalness is an important factor in their choice of foods and is often seen as opposite to processed foods, that the meat substitute Planted did not trigger a sense of naturalness or unnaturalness in the participants, leaving no correlation between Planted and the participant's interest of naturalness. Food neophobia and food technology neophobia, on the other hand, seem to play an influential and essential factor when it comes to the consumer's perception of meat substitutes, more specifically Planted.

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Casagrande Meret (2020). Disease avoidance through the adoption of preventive measures: An exploratory study about the behavioural response to the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has evolved into an enormous global health crisis. Due to the current lack of vaccines and e˙ective medication, people must adopt disease avoiding behaviours (Anderson, Heesterbeek, Klinkenberg, & Hollingsworth, 2020). Hand washing with soap, the use of disinfectant, self-isolation and "social distancing" (i.e. maintaining a greater than usual physi-cal distance) are some examples of measures proposed by the WHO to contain the spread of the virus (Wilder-Smith & Freedman, 2020). Understanding the drivers behind those disease-preventing actions is essential to maintain global and public health. The two emotions, disgust and fear, have been previously identified as important predictors for increased hygiene behaviour (Ammann, Siegrist, & Hartmann, 2019; Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2009; Pellegrino, Cran-dall, & Seo, 2015).
Based on this evidence, the present thesis aimed to analyse the relationship between disgust, fear, hygiene behaviour and di˙erent behaviours suggested by the German government to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our main goal was to find out if disgust or fear may work as e˙ective predictors for disease avoidance behaviours.
For this purpose, we conducted an online survey in Germany with 519 partici-pants. Results indicated that the adoption of disease avoidance behaviours and other COVID-19 related actions (e.g., alteration in shopping routine) depends on various interrelated parameters (i.e. sex, age, self-perception, hygiene be-haviour, pathogen and food disgust sensitivity, as well as fear of COVID-19). The most significant triggers for voluntary adoption was the feeling of fear of COVID-19, hygiene behaviour and di˙erent disgust traits (i.e. pathogen and food disgust).
These findings support our hypothesis that emotions like disgust and fear may work as motivational factors for disease prevention. In the context of COVID-19, these drivers can be seen as important tools to address public health messages and thereby motivate people to engage more in disease pre-venting measures.

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Deilmann Constantin (2020). The Role of Trust in Online Meat Retail

The Swiss online food market is still relatively small, with a market share of just above 5%. This study aims to investigate the reasons behind the low sales figures using the example of meat by conducting qualitative interviews with nine respondents between the age of 20 and 40 years. For this purpose, the interviewees were asked about their perceived advantages and disadvantages as well as the role of trust in the online meat market. In order to examine the role of trust in more detail, fictitious scenarios with content creators were conducted, and the participants were questioned about their attitudes and trust towards the promoted products. It was found that consumers do not yet perceive any real benefits for the ordinary online meat retail; however, there is a potential interest in more exclusive products or products that could be purchased directly from the source, such as small farmers or butchers from smaller villages with their local specialities. The consumers have clear demands on the costs and reliability of the delivery as well as the quality of the delivered products; therefore, risk perception is higher for fresh products than for other electronic market segments. Given that the lack of perceived benefits has no positive impact on the attitude towards online meat retail, most consumers have stated that under the current conditions they would continue to purchase their meat in the traditional market. However, when they were confronted with a professional chef in the fictional scenario, who recommended products from an online butcher, a significant positive increase in the attitude towards the web-shop was observed. This can be explained due to the increase of the perceived benefits resulting from the convincing expertise of the content creator, while the perceived risks decreased due to the authenticity as well as the knowledge that the content creator vouches for the quality of the products with his reputation. Consequently, in this case, a positive relationship between the product recommendation of a content creator and the attitude of the consumers towards the product could be associated.

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Gasser Oriana (2020). The whole beast: Consumers' perception of animal co-products

Increasing meat consumption and the growing demand for prime cuts are trends with a considerable impact on the environment. Thus, the implementation of more sustainable meat consumption practices is of great importance. A strategy proposed to reduce the influence of meat consumption on the environment is the so-called Nose-to-Tail approach. Needless to say, that consumer acceptance is a critical factor for the successful application of the Nose-to-Tail practice. This study investigated factors that might influence the consumers perception of animal co-products with the means of 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews. Swiss consumers (three males and seven females) between the age of 20 and 33 were questioned about familiarity and knowledge of animal co-products and concerns about Food Waste. Additionally, consumers thoughts and opinions on what happens with unwanted animal co-products were examined. Findings show that consumers concern with Food Waste had little influence on the perception of animal co-products. However, heavy meat eaters were more willing to try the Nose-to-Tail approach than consumers who eat small quantities of meat. Familiarity and knowledge about animal co-products seem to influence the perception of offal but especially the perception of different meat types.

Hunter Sacha (2020). Different associations to meat and meat alternatives

Increasing meat consumption and the growing demand for prime cuts are trends with a considerable impact on the environment. Thus, the implementation of more sustainable meat consumption practices is of great importance. A strategy proposed to reduce the influence of meat consumption on the environment is the so-called Nose-to-Tail approach. Needless to say, that consumer acceptance is a critical factor for the successful application of the Nose-to-Tail practice. This study investigated factors that might influence the consumers perception of animal co-products with the means of 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews. Swiss consumers (three males and seven females) between the age of 20 and 33 were questioned about familiarity and knowledge of animal co-products and concerns about Food Waste. Additionally, consumers thoughts and opinions on what happens with unwanted animal co-products were examined. Findings show that consumers concern with Food Waste had little influence on the perception of animal co-products. However, heavy meat eaters were more willing to try the Nose-to-Tail approach than consumers who eat small quantities of meat. Familiarity and knowledge about animal co-products seem to influence the perception of offal but especially the perception of different meat types.

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Lengancher Janine (2020). Risikowahrnehmung von Laien gegenüber Pestiziden

Pestizide werden in der Landwirtschaft und in Gärten eingesetzt. Der landwirtschaftliche Einsatz wird oftmals kritisch betrachtet. Der Heimgebrauch von Pestiziden nimmt eine sekundäre Rolle in der Diskussion über den Pestizidgebrauch ein. Die Risikowahrnehmung von Laien im Umgang mit Pestiziden kann einen Einfluss auf den Heimgebrauch von Pestiziden haben. In dieser Bachelorarbeit wird untersucht, welche Faktoren einen Einfluss auf die Risikowahrnehmung und den Pestizidgebrauch von Laien haben können. Mittels eines Literaturreviews wird der aktuelle Forschungsstand in diesem Themenfeld untersucht. Es werden qualitative Interviews mit Laien im Umgang mit Pestiziden durchgeführt. Viele Faktoren können die Risikowahrnehmung und die Nutzung von Pestiziden durch Laien beeinflussen. Die Resultate aus den durchgeführten Interviews indizieren, dass Laien besorgt über Pestizide sind. Eine Verbindung zwischen dem Grad der Risikowahrnehmung und dem persönlichen Pestizideinsatz kann nicht nachgewiesen werden. Es können wichtige Informationen über den Heimgebrauch von Pestiziden und die Art der eingesetzten Pestizide gewonnen werden. Die Einstellung von Laien kann einen Einfluss auf Entscheidungen betreffend Pestiziden haben. Diese Erkenntnis legt nahe, dass Pestizide ein wichtiges Thema für Laien sind und dass die Forschungsergebnisse in diesem Themenbereich von Bedeutung sein können.

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Möllenkopf Janina (2020). A Study About the Perceived Naturalness of Snacks: Validation of the Food Naturalness Index

The Food Naturalness Index (FNI) is a measure that assigns a number between 1 and 5 to food products. By displaying that information on a product, one can easily identify how natural this product is. An index close to 5 indicates that the product is very natural, whereas values close to 1 suggest that the product is very unnatural. The Food Naturalness Index was developed by researchers of ETH Zurich and Hero AG, Lenzburg. It considers four di˙erent categories, namely the farming practice, the number of additives, the number of unnecessary ingredients as well as the number of processed ingredients (Sanchez-Siles et al., 2019). Determining how natural a product really is, is of great importance, especially to consumers. Over the last few years, natural claims on products have steadily increased (Skubisz, 2017) and as the term’s use is not legally regulated (Marquardt & Burkink, 2002) consumers risk being led to believe that many of those products are more natural than they really are.
The objective of this thesis is to validate the current version of the Food Naturalness Index. The relationship between the FNI and consumers’ perception of naturalness has already been tested in a previous study by testing a wide range of food products. Our goal was to find out whether the perception of consumers coincides as well with the index when only examining products from one category of foods, namely snacks.
Over the course of our experiment, the participants had to align 29 di˙erent snacks from unnatural to natural. By calculating the mean rank of each product, we ob-tained the perceived naturalness. We found that the Food Naturalness Index cor-related strongly with the perceived naturalness of the snacks. The correlation after Pearson was very positive (r = 0.83, p < 0.001, n = 29). Furthermore, we acquired better insight to the factors that influence the naturalness perception by evaluating a questionnaire, which the participants filled out after the experiment.

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Radaelli Dalila (2020). Segmentation and attitude of consumers towards fortified foods - Literature review

Our fortified food decisions are driven by multiple factors. Those factors are related to each other and vary from the nature of the fortified food, the carrier, to the fortified enhancement, to personal factors, which include health awareness, knowledge, age, gender, education, income, origin and trust in the food industry.
The present literature review, based on 36 articles, focuses on micro- and macronutrient preference, on carrier food preference, and on consumer segmentation.
In comparison to other variables, the type of carrier food has the most significant influence on the choice to consume fortified food. The most effective carriers are the ones that the consumers use generally in their daily diet, such as yogurt. The most popular utilized or consumed ingredient enhancements are vitamin D, omega-3, vitamin C and calcium. In the field of segmentation, gender, age, and knowledge seem to be the most relevant factors that influence the consumption of fortified food; female, older, and younger users are the most frequent. A combination of specific carrier, ingredient enhancement, and carrier could influence fortified food choice more than single factors alone.

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Schmid Dominique (2020). Development and assessment of chocolate mixtures for differnce testing in panel training

The food industry uses sensory evaluation to test ingredients, to develop products and to estimate quality (de Kock, 2019). Competing companies need the sensory evaluation of food in order to meet customer needs and thus to survive on the market (Imram, 1999). This makes it possible to be continuously innovative and successful, to optimise existing products and to develop new technologies (Imram, 1999). One method in sensory evaluation is the sensory discrimination test (O'Mahony, 1992), which is used, for example, in case of recipe or ingredient changes, which should not alter the product (Stone & Sidel, 1978). Duo-Trio testing is a popular test of discrimination testing and is performed to see if two products are different or not (Poste, Mackie, Butler, & Larmond, 1991). Sensory evaluation tests like these are performed by a sensory panel, which is a group of more or less trained people (Rogers, 2018).
This chapter gives the theoretical background of this thesis; explains sensory evaluation, how a sensory panel is defined and how to manage it, and provides details for discrimination testing and the test design.

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Schöni Tanja (2020). Perception and Acceptance of Suboptimal Fruits and Vegetables

Suboptimal fruits and vegetables that deviate physically from a certain norm are seldom offered by retailers, contributing significantly to food waste, because it is assumed that consumers prefer perfect looking products. This study empirically examines the assumption of suboptimal products being less accepted by analyzing how three different factors, type of suboptimality, product category and organic labeling, influence willingness to pay of consumers in Switzerland. A sample of 224 Swiss consumers indicated their purchase intentions in an online experiment for one fruit and two vegetables with varying types of suboptimalities (normal, misshaped, stained) and in dependence of an organic label. Results showed that both types of imperfections (misshaped, stained) and the presence of an organic label influence consumers’ willingness to pay, but the significance varies among product categories (apple, tomato, eggplant). A difference between misshaped or stained products, however, did not emerge. The three analysed factors drive consumers’ purchase intention, but these factors alone can not fully explain perception and acceptance of suboptimal fruits and vegetables. Consumers’ attitudes, inferential beliefs and the context are likely to influence purchase intention too. Thus, increasing knowledge of factors influencing suboptimal food waste behavior might help developing successful strategies, such as price adoption or labels in accordance with consumers’ willingness to pay, to increase perception and acceptance of suboptimal products to reduce edible food waste.

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Siegenthaler Noelle (2020). Consumers' willingness to buy suboptimal food items and the influence of a price reduction

With the exacerbation of climate change, the topic of food waste gained more and more attention. The need for a more sustainable future, ethical and food safety aspects are drivers for a minimization of the amount of food wasted. Food waste happens for various reasons and occurs along the entire food supply chain. One specific source of food waste is consumers’ aversion to food with certain suboptimal characteristics like a damaged packaging or a close expiration date. Thereby, consumers indirectly waste the food by not buying and consuming it. The present study investigates whether the willingness to buy suboptimal products can be increased by reducing the price and consumers’ quality assessment of such products. In addition, we examined the impact of various factors such as environmental awareness, price focus, product category or tolerance for imperfection on this behavior. A questionnaire was designed and completed by 119 Swiss-German speaking citizens in order to answer these questions. It contained a choice experiment (10 ´ 2) where participants were shown an optimal and a suboptimal version of a food item. They had to decide which of the two product versions they would consume inside a store. This was done for ten different product categories. To determine whether reducing the price affects the willingness to buy a suboptimal product, participants were split into two groups. In group one, the suboptimal products were not reduced in price while in group two they were. In a second step, participants were asked to assess different quality dimensions of the food items shown in the choice experiment. Furthermore, information about personal characteristics were requested. Results of the present study show a significant higher willingness to buy suboptimal food when the food item was reduced in price. The price-value relation of suboptimal products was higher when the food had a reduced price. The food category impacted consumers’ likelihood to buy the suboptimal product significantly. For instance, the bent cucumber was significantly more taken than the milk close to the expiration date or the spotted apple. In group one, a higher education level and higher environmental awareness increased the consumers’ likelihood to buy the suboptimal food item significantly. In group two, with decreasing age and with higher tolerance for imperfection the willingness to buy the suboptimal food item raised significantly. For group one, the quality assessment across all different quality dimensions was significantly better for the optimal products than for the suboptimal ones. The same applied to group two with the exception that the two versions of the cucumber did not significantly differ. Further, the quality assessment significantly differed between the product categories or rather certain products stood out for a certain quality dimension.
Given these finding, we conclude that a reduction in price can help to reduce food waste. Still, there is a need for other actions to prevent food from getting wasted. Personal characteristics can be used to predict consumers’ likelihood to buy suboptimal food items. Further investigations are needed to determine more factors which impact the behavior regarding consumers’ attitude towards suboptimal products and how consumers use them.

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Trifkovic Natasa (2020). How do date labels influence the food waste behavior of a consumer and their perception of food?

Food waste was estimated to be around 2.6 Million tons per year in Switzerland alone. Furthermore, 100`000 tons are due to food waste at retail level, of which 95% would be preventable. To evaluate the impact of food date labels on food waste at retail level, we conducted an online study with a convenience sample (N=81). We split the participants into two groups. The first group was presented a commonly used date label, while the second group was shown a “but also good for longer” label. Moreover, the questionnaire was divided into three parts. Firstly, the socio-demographics, in which we asked the participants about their age, sex et ceteri. Secondly, we asked the participants to rate ten food items (e.g. couscous, ham) based on the given food attributes on a 7-point Likert scale. Lastly, we tested five constructs (PHR (Perceived health risks), FDSs (8-item Food Disgust Scale), CEX Tolerance for expiration date), SR (Shopping routine) and SC (Shopping control)). We conducted a t-test on the average food attribute ratings of the two test groups and found no significant differences. Further, we tested the average food attribute ratings for correlations with socio-demographic variables and the tested constructs. The food attribute ratings of both groups were found to be correlating with PHR and CEX, while the first group also correlated with FDSs. In general, no strong correlations of socio-demographic variables and the average food attribute ratings were found. Lastly, we did a regression analysis and we found that age, PHR, FDSs and SR were significant predictors of the average food attribute ratings. We concluded no finding of significant influence of the “but also good for longer” label on the food waste behavior and perception of a food item.

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Varrone Andrea (2020). Sweet Maluma and Bitter Minor: How the Expected Taste Perception of Non-Words and Food Images Are Influenced by Musical Keys

The gustatory perception is a multisensory concept relying on inputs from all sensory modalities. What information auditory stimuli as well as the shape and sound of words provide in order to generate a taste sensation has been researched to a great extent, albeit mostly in isolation from one another. In order to gain an understanding of how the two factors “music” and “phonetics” interplay in creating a taste expectancy, this study focuses on the perception of unknown non-words and their associated tastes, especially when exposed to music differing in key. If and how the key of the background music might influence the expected taste perception in combination with visual stimuli in the form of images depicting foods is to be shown further. We conducted an online survey, in which participants of a convenience sample rated the expected intensity of the basic tastes sweet, salty, sour, and bitter in imaginary dishes named after non-words – namely maluma bouba, lula, and bobolo as round-sounding and kiki, ruki, takete, and decter as sharp-sounding non-words – as well as in foods based on their appearance on images. For both tasks, participants were split into groups and exposed to different auditory settings: the first group listened to a song in a major key, while the second group heard the same song in a minor key. The third group acted as a control group and did not listen to any music. Lastly and in order to assess the direct association between the non-words and the presented foods, the two categories had to be matched in what appeared to be the best fitting pair, with none of the groups listening to music. Round-sounding non-words were rated significantly sweeter (p = 0.04) but less sour (p = 0.02) and bitter (p = 0.03) than their sharp-sounding counterparts. Exposure to the song in major resulted in some non-words and foods to be perceived significantly less sour and less bitter compared to the exposure to the same song in minor. Lastly, round-sounding non-words were assigned to sweet foods significantly more often (p < 0.001) than to savoury foods, while sharp-sounding words were matched with savoury dishes most often. We discuss the role of associations with the background music as well as sound and shape symbolism as reasonings for the obtained results. Overall, we conclude that unknown non-words and the appearance of foods can generate a taste expectancy, which can further be influenced by the key of the background music in terms of sourness and bitterness.

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Vogt Julia (2020). Perceived appropriateness of different food shapes using 3D food printing technology

3D food printing is a new technology on the food market, that allows to produce food in completely new shapes with a printer. While new, tailored processes for 3D printing are being developed for all types of textures and food consistency, there is still no acceptance on the consumer side. An online survey with 519 people across Switzerland was conducted to examine the triggers, that cause this bad attitude towards 3D food printing among consumers. The participants were asked to rate different images of 3D printed food regarding their perceived naturalness, healthiness, willingness to buy and eat. As possible triggers, the used ingredients and printed shapes were considered. Further people’s sociodemographic characteristics as well as food neophobia, food disgust and affinity for naturalness were examined as an influence on participants’ acceptance of 3D printed food. In addition, children of the participants were asked about their acceptance of 3D printed food in order to determine what influenced their attitudes. After all children in particular offer great market potential when it comes to making vegetables appealing. While especially the ingredients had an influence on adult’s and children’s perception of the 3D printed food, the shape did only slightly influence the acceptance. The adults were more positive about 3D printed food if they had a higher education and/or income status. The children’s characteristics did not influence their perception of 3D printed food. To analyze children’s perception of 3D printed food, further studies have to be made, while for the adults some trigger points were uncovered.

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Wehrli Lenn (2020). Consumers' perception of milk substitutes

Since the year 2000, milk consumption in Switzerland has declined steadily while the sector of milk alternatives is growing globally. However, there are only a few studies on the consumers' opinions on milk alternatives.
The goal of this thesis was to determine the consumers' perception of milk alternatives and how it differs from the perception of cow’s milk. To reach this goal, an online survey (N = 117) was conducted. Consumers that bought cow’s milk did not agree with the statement that milk alternatives taste good. They most often associated milk alternatives with soy milk which was rated poorly. There are some aspects which were not as well perceived in cow’s milk compared to milk alternatives by consumers that purchase cow’s milk. They agreed less with statements like “cow’s milk has few hormones and antibiotics”, “is good for the environment” or “is good for animal welfare” than they did for milk alternatives.
Consumers of milk alternatives, on the other hand, agreed more with the statement that milk alternatives taste good than they did for cow’s milk. Their most frequent association with milk alternatives is oat milk which also was the most consumed milk alternative in this study. Furthermore, oat milk also was the best-rated milk alternative for consumers of both types of milk and consumers of milk alternatives in the section of associations.
The most important aspects during the purchase of milk alternatives were taste, environmental friendliness and animal welfare. The most important aspect during the purchase of cow’s milk also was taste, followed by regional production and health.
Potential drivers of milk alternative consumption which can statistically explain the variance in milk alternative consumption the best are consumers’ opinion on milk alternatives, consumers’ opinion on cow’s milk and diet. The consumers’ opinion on milk alternatives can statistically explain 47% of the variance in milk alternative consumption, diet explains 30% and the consumers' opinion about cow’s milk explains 27%.
Oat milk seems to be the most popular milk alternative in the milk alternative consuming group and potentially the best-tasting milk alternative. Marketing it to the cow’s milk consuming population might boost sales numbers and consumer appreciation of milk alternatives. There should be advertising messages on the bottles of oat milk about health benefits for the cow’s milk consumers and messages about environmental friendliness for consumers of milk alternatives. There also should be messages about the taste on the bottle because this was the most important aspect during the purchase for both groups. These messages could be the most effective to increase sales.

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Rosenberger Monika D. (2019). Domestic food safety knowledge and behaviour of young people when handling poultry

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between the knowledge, behaviour and risk assessment of young adults regarding hygiene when preparing poultry. These topics were examined using an online survey, in which 79 people aged between 15 and 35 years participated. It was found that hygienic knowledge has a direct influence on consumer behaviour. In addition, all participants had a false risk perception of the health hazards in their kitchen. Future information campaigns should focus on closing knowledge gaps identified in this paper and develop behavioural techniques which are easy for consumers to remember.

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Lange Claudia (2019). Factors influencing students’ motivation to participate in climate strikes

The emerging movement “Fridays For Future” which started in 2018, where students strike and protest in order to call for action on climate change, has been discussed controversially in the media and politics. This new kind of behavior of young people raised questions about the motives of participation in the strikes, as well as about the durability and possible impact of this movement. Earlier research on environmental protest indicated that environmental concern, trust in government and political orientation are strong predictors of protest behavior. Studies on protest regarding climate change in general and not a specific environmental issue, however, been missing. We conducted in-class surveys in twelve lectures at university and ETH Zürich (N = 638). Results suggested that students taking part in the climate strikes expressed more concern about general climate change, as well as about the specific risks sea-level rise, loss of biodiversity, health-related risks, changing precipitation patterns and climate migration. Moreover, we also found protest participants to be less trustful of the government, as well as more left winged. We therefore conclude that these actual concerns leading to mobilization could imply that this movement will not fade out soon and will probably have an impact on future policy making.

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Malinverno Nadia (2019). Wie gut können Konsumenten und Konsumentinnen die Umweltfreundlichkeit von Menüs einschätzen?

Die Nahrungsmittelproduktion und der Nahrungsmittelkonsum beeinflussen die Umwelt in vielen Aspekten negativ. Der negative Einfluss reicht von der Bodennutzung bis hin zu der Verpackung und Entsorgung der Lebensmittel. Die globalen Lebensmittelkreisläufe werden durch die Nachfrage der Konsumenten angetrieben. Bei der Auswahl der Lebensmittel treffen die Konsumenten wichtige Umweltentscheidungen, die grosse Auswirkungen haben. Aus diesem Grund ist es wichtig herauszufinden, inwiefern die Konsumenten überhaupt fähig sind, umweltfreundliche Menü-Optionen zu identifizieren. In diesem Zusammenhang ist es von Interesse, Erkenntnisse darüber zu gewinnen, aufgrund welcher Aspekte Konsumenten die Umweltfreundlichkeit von Menüs einschätzen und ob dies zu einer adäquaten Einschätzung führt.

Um diese Forschungsfragen zu beantworten, wurde ein Online-Experiment durchgeführt, in dem die Teilnehmer jeweils identifizieren sollten, welches von zwei Menüs das umweltfreundlichere ist. Für die Studie wurden insgesamt 13 verschiedene Gerichte ausgewählt, die sich in ihrer Zusammenstellung unterschieden. Die Menüs wurden so ausgewählt, dass sie eine möglichst grosse Bandbreite von unterschiedlichen Menüs abdeckten. Es waren Menüs mit verschiedenen Fleisch- und Fischsorten sowie vegetarische Menüs mit und ohne Käse und auch besonders klimafreundliche Menüs enthalten. Weiter wurde bei der Auswahl darauf geachtet, dass die Menüs bei den Konsumenten beliebt sind und daher von vielen gegessen werden. Im Experiment wurden jeweils zwei Menüs nebeneinander gezeigt und die Teilnehmer wurden gebeten, das ihrer Meinung nach umweltfreundlichere Menü auszuwählen. Es wurden alle 78 möglichen Menü-Kombinationen abgefragt. In der Studie wurde ausserdem das Umweltwissen der Teilnehmer in Bezug auf umweltfreundliche Ernährung und ihre Einschätzung, inwiefern sie sich als eine umweltfreundliche Person sehen, gemessen.

Die Analyse der Ergebnisse zeigte, dass die Umfrageteilnehmer nur mässig im Stande sind, Menüs im Hinblick auf ihre Umweltfreundlichkeit einzuschätzen. Sie bekunden vor allem bei der Beurteilung von Menüs mit den Fleischsorten Schwein und Rind Schwierigkeiten. Generell werden Menüs mit Fleisch und mit Milchprodukten in Bezug auf die Umweltbelastung unterschätzt und Gerichte mit Rezepten aus fernen Ländern werden eher überschätzt. Weiter wird die Saisonalität der Produkte in den Menüs nicht in die Entscheidung einbezogen. Personen mit mehr Wissen über eine umweltfreundliche Ernährung schneiden bei der Identifikation des umweltfreundlicheren Menüs besser ab. Männer schnitten bei der Beurteilung der Umweltfreundlichkeit besser ab als Frauen, obwohl sich letztere als umweltfreundlicher einstuften.

Die neu gewonnenen Erkenntnisse in Bezug auf Wissenslücken und die Über- oder Unterschätzung des Umwelteinflusses in Zusammenhang mit dem Konsum von verschiedenen Menüs sind eine wichtige Grundlage für eine optimierte und gezielte Informationsvermittlung zur Förderung einer umweltfreundlichen Ernährung.

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Stucki Michelle (2019). Analysis of the influence of color on sensory perception of food and beverages in real and virtual conditions

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) gained much more interest in research including purchase decisions or product developmental processes, since it has provided the opportunity to produce virtual environments and situations which are created to fully suit the wishes of the user (Füller & Matzler, 2007; McMahan & Bowman, 2007). A recent sensory study conducted in our group using VR showed that it is possible to influence consumers’ taste perception by changing the color of the given food product. The present thesis is focused on the comparison between VR and real life (RL) in order to investigate if the same results can be obtained in both conditions. In total, 100 German-speaking people were recruited including 63 females and 37 males with an age span reaching from 19 to 77 years. The participants were divided into RL and VR condition where in the latter, the participants were asked to wear a head-mounted display during the tasting part. In both conditions, the participants had to try and subsequently rate liking and sweetness for three food samples, which consisted of two different juices (orange and pineapple juice) and a piece of lemon cake. Additionally, all food samples were either used in their original form or treated with food colorants. Afterwards, the participants filled in questionnaires about food neophobia, food disgust sensitivity and, if assigned to the VR condition, about presence and engagement sensation (PQ) in the VR setting. No significant difference was found in the liking and sweetness perception of fruit juices and cake between the two conditions. The range of named flavors for the samples was only a little greater in RL than in the VR condition. However, a difference was found for flavor identification: participants identified the samples more often with the correct flavor in the VR condition than in the RL condition. Furthermore, additional significant correlations were found in the VR condition. According to the influence of color on taste perception, the colored versions of all three tasting samples were named with a greater range of different flavors and a higher count of incorrect flavors in general. We also investigated the taste sensitivity (TS) which is defined as the amount of correct named flavors among the three tasting samples. We did not find a significant difference between males’ and females’ TS. Though, we revealed a significant correlation between TS and age and between male’s TS and PQ scores. In summary, we found both similarities and differences in the results of the conducted sensory study between RL and VR condition. It should be further investigated on what the differences are based in order to develop optimized systems for future sensory studies. Still, the influence of color on taste
perception was shown for both conditions. Additionally, our study extended the current body of knowledge about food disgust sensitivity, food neophobia and TS and contributes to the understanding of consumer decisions.

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Schmandt Cyra (2019). Associations to Meat and Meat Alternatives

The meat production is not sustainable for the planet, livestock or humans. Therefore, new options need to be discovered, studied and evaluated. These new options are meat alternatives. They have a similar appearance, texture and taste as various meats and their protein source is most commonly plant-based. Even though they have high potential to be the future protein sources, still a lot of people oppose these products. This is why this thesis gathered information on associations towards meat alternatives. Participants answered questions using free word associations in an online survey. They answered questions either regarding meat alternatives or regarding meat. Further, the participants were split into groups of women and men, and flexitarians or omnivores. The results were differentiated into 15 categories and
12 characteristics, which formed a contingency table. The contingency table was then analyzed in a correspondence analysis in SPSS.
The results showed a clear difference in associations between flexitarian participants and omnivore participants. While omnivore participants associated meat with positive evaluations, flexitarians were more concerned about animals and their welfare. There were also differences between men and women. Flexitarian women associated meat with more skepticism than men. This thesis contributed to a better view and understanding of the consumer barriers which exist towards meat alternatives and can help overcome these beliefs.

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Stegeman Simon (2019). Wahrnehmung von Palmöl und des Labels „RSPO“ beim Schweizer Konsumenten

In der heutigen Zeit ist Palmöl ein wichtiger und vielverwendeter Rohstoff. Palmöl hat aufgrund seiner Eigenschaften verschiedenste Einsatzgebiete und wird für essbare, sowie nicht essbare Produkte verwendet (Yusof und Chan, 2004). Aufgrund seiner Anbauweise wird Palmöl oft kritisiert und diskutiert. Die Wahrnehmung von Palmöl bei den Konsumenten scheint eher negativ zu sein (Hartmann, Hieke, Taper und Siegrist, 2017) und dies wird für die Palmölindustrie immer mehr zum Problem. Das Ziel dieser Studie war es herauszufinden, mit was die Teilnehmer*innen Palmöl assoziieren und welches Gefühl sie damit verbinden. Zudem sollte der Bekanntheitsgrad und die Bedeutung des Labels RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) unter Schweizer Erwachsenen erforscht werden. Dafür wurde eine Online-Umfrage in der Deutsch- und Westschweiz durchgeführt (N=1076). Die Studienteilnehmer*innen gaben ihre ersten Assoziationen mit Palmöl an und eine Affektmessung wurde durchgeführt. Der Wissensstand über das Label RSPO sowie Bio-Suisse (Referenzlabel), Besorgnis über Nachhaltigkeitsthemen und Umwelteinstellungen wurden erfasst. Die Assoziationen zu Palmöl waren im Allgemeinen eher negativ und hatten mehrheitlich mit der Zerstörung der Natur zu tun. Die Gefühle gegenüber Palmöl waren in der Westschweiz noch negativer als in der Deutschschweiz. Prädiktoren für negativere Affekte waren weibliches Geschlecht, höherer Ausbildungsstand, Besorgnis über Nachhaltigkeitsthemen und geringes Wissen über das RSPO Label. Das Wissen über das Label RSPO war insgesamt sehr gering und ein geringer Bildungsstand, Umweltapathie und zunehmendes Alter waren Prädiktoren für weniger Wissen über das Label. Zudem scheint es so, dass Berichte in den Medien und öffentliche Debatten einen möglichen Einflussfaktor auf die Einstellung gegenüber Palmöl sind. Für die Palmölindustrie wird es notwendig sein, sich nachhaltiger zu gestalten und so auf die eher hohe Nachhaltigkeitsbesorgnis der Probanden zu reagieren. Nur so scheint es vielleicht noch möglich zu sein, dass das Image von Palmöl positiver wird.

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Wicki Ursula (2019). Umweltbewusstsein und umweltfreundliches Verhalten – Wechselwirkungen und Einflussfaktoren

Jedes Handeln hat Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt. Mit den Entscheidungen, die Konsumenten täglich treffen, wird die natürliche Umwelt belastet. Dabei spielt die Lebensmittelproduktion eine wichtige Rolle. Die Landwirtschaft macht 80% des weltweiten Frischwasserverbrauchs aus und zählt zu den grössten Quellen von Treibhausgasemissionen (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO, 2006; Gerber et al., 2013). Laut Weber & Matthews (2008) ist die Produktion mit über 80% die energieintensivste und dadurch emissionsreichste Phase in der Lebensmittelindustrie. Der Transport der Futter- und Lebensmittel hat dabei deutlich geringere Emissionen von nur 11%. Die Fleisch- und Milchproduktion ist deutlich ressourcenintensiver als der Anbau von pflanzlicher Nahrung, wobei grosse Unterschiede zwischen rotem und weissem Fleisch bestehen (National Research Council, 2000). Die Produktion von 1kg Rindfleisch verursacht durchschnittlich 150% mehr Treibhausgase als 1kg Fisch oder Geflügel (Weber & Matthews, 2008). Das Schweizer Stimmvolk hat sich im Jahr 2017 für die Energiestrategie 2050 entschieden (Bundeskanzlei BK, 2018). Die Strategie soll dazu beitragen, die energiebedingten Umweltbelastungen in der Schweiz zu verringern (Bundesamt für Energie BFE, 2018). Die Auswirkungen der Treibhausgasemissionen, unter anderem durch Lebensmittelproduktion und –transport, auf den Klimawandel weltweit wurden im Jahr 2015 an der Klimakonferenz in Paris thematisiert. Als Ziel des internationalen Abkommens gilt es, die globale Klimaerwärmung unter zwei Grad halten zu können (United Nations UN, 2015). Dabei hat sich auch die Schweiz dazu verpflichtet ihre Emissionen zu verringern (Bundesamt für Umwelt BAFU, 2016). Die tägliche Wahl zwischen tierischen oder pflanzlichen Produkten, sowie die Herkunft und Verwendung der Lebensmittel hat somit einen grossen Einfluss auf die Umwelt. Um die Konsumenten bei ihren täglichen Entscheidungen zu unterstützen und gezielt auf umweltfreundliche Alternativen aufmerksam zu machen, braucht es ein vertieftes Verständnis der Beweggründe für nachhaltiges Verhalten. Mithilfe eines Fragebogens wurden Schweizer Haushalte nach ihrem Umgang mit Lebensmitteln sowie den Motiven und Einstellungen in Bezug auf umweltfreundliches Konsumverhalten befragt. Die Antworten sollen Auskunft darüber geben, wie das Umweltbewusstsein beeinflusst werden kann und wie dieses mit anderen Faktoren von umweltbewusstem Verhalten zusammenhängt.

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Blum Jennifer (2019). Evaluation of Food Disgust Sensitivity Using Eye-Tracking

Food disgust is an emotion that everyone knows, and people are faced with it on a daily basis. Disgust triggers a defense mechanism in humans to protect themselves against pathogens. In this paper, eyetracking technology is used to understand what people need to see in food in order to feel disgust. In general, the eye-tracking technology is a popular tool for understanding consumer behavior as it allows to examine what consumers are observing. This bachelor thesis aims at improving our understanding of the sensitivity of food disgust and investigates complex behavior related to disgusting food. For this purpose, the study analyzes gaze patterns and the changing viewing behavior of participants while disgusting food is being displayed. Data was collected from 52 participants, aged between 20 to 65
years. The experimental work was split into two parts: an eye-tracking part and a questionnaire. The participants were subjected to 13 pictures while their eye movements were tracked. For each picture, the following question had to be answered: How disgust do you find the depicted food? In the second part of the experiment, a questionnaire was completed by the participants. On the basis of the eyetracking technology, it was possible to established that the fixation count and viewing time were higher for pictures that were rated as more disgusting. In addition, heatmaps revealed which parts of the pictures were viewed the most and showed that disgusting parts of a picture were fixed more frequently. In contrast, a longer average fixation duration was found for pictures that were assessed as less disgusting.
For future studies, it would be crucial to design a retest to decide if the number of fixations for disgusting or non-disgusting objects is higher. In conclusion, it can be said that no significant correlation between participant’s food disgust sensitivity (assessed with FDS short) and viewing behavior results was found. For future eye-tracking studies, it would be exciting to verify the results of this study and analyze
whether the attitude towards disgusting foods is changing, so that discernible trends that were uncovered in this work can be translated into consumer choices.

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Eggimann Melanie (2019). What decision-making process do patients use under uncertainty?

Most decisions are made under uncertainty without knowing the exact probabilities of decision options. Decision-making research was mostly conducted in hypothetical settings with urn experiments or financial gambles. This literature review examined the decision-making process of patients and the transferability of those mainly economic experiments into the medical setting with answering the research questions. Those were: 1) What decision-making process do patients use under uncertainty?, 2) Are patients influenced by their individual tolerance of uncertainty in their decision-making-process?, 3) How do socio-demographic variables influence patients’ decision-making process?, and 4) How do medical conditions influence patients’ decision-making process? This literature review included 14 articles all conducted in a medical setting. Patients made their decisions by applying heuristics, weighing harms against benefits, gathering information, and prioritizing personal aims and values. They often used no rational decision-making process. Tolerance of uncertainty influenced how patients weigh harms against benefits. Socio-demographic variables showed impacts on decision-making. Older and lower educated patients decided in a more passive decision-making style. Gender showed effects on the decisional conflict with men experiencing lower decisional conflict than women. Decision-making style shifted from active to more passive the more sever the medical condition was. The included articles suggest that patients’ decision-making process differed from normative approaches such as expected utility theory and subjective expected utility theory,
mostly due to the highly emotional charged situation and time pressure.

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Guenat Anna Mahe (2019). How Disgust Sensitivity Affects the Appetite in a Filthy Environment - a Virtual Reality Experiment

Evolutionarily seen, disgust acts as a broad adaptive functional system to protect us against pathogen infections (Curtis, Aunger, & Rabie, 2004; Curtis, de Barra, & Aunger, 2011). It serves as a defence mechanism to avoid the contact with pathogens like microorganisms or toxins (Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2009). Recent studies focused on the understanding and assessment of people’s food disgust sensitivity, since it was shown that it influences people’s eating behaviour (Ammann, Hartmann, & Siegrist, 2018a, 2018b). The aim of this bachelor thesis is to further examine the influence of disgust on people’s appetite while being confronted with certain disgust inducing cues in a virtual environment. The virtual environment consisted of a food buffet including three trays, one with meat, one with pasta and one with carrots, as well as several components picturing a filthy environment and eventually inducing disgust. In total, 50 people took part in the study. They were asked to scoop as much food from the virtual buffet as they would want to eat as a regular lunch. They additionally filled out a questionnaire to evaluate their experienced state and trait disgust. The data showed no correlation between the Food Disgust Scale (FDS) score (i.e. trait disgust) and the total quantity scooped. However, the total quantity scooped correlated negatively with the question about how disgusting they found the environment (i.e. state disgust). This can be explained with two theories. Either primarily state disgust was induced by the disgust stimuli in the virtual reality (theory 1) or state and trait disgust play a different role in influencing appetite (theory 2). In the second case, the participants’ current state of experiencing disgust would have had a stronger influence on the appetite than the permanent food disgust sensitivity. To our knowledge this is the first study that led to these theories. Thus, it remains an interesting subject for further investigation and more research will be needed to elucidate the relation between disgust and appetite.

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Pogliaghi Alessio (2019). Stereotypisierung von Gastgebern in Abhängigkeit davon, ob sie ein teures oder günstiges, vegetarisches oder fleischhaltiges Menü servieren

In den letzten Jahren ist klar geworden, dass die Erwärmung der letzten 60 Jahre nicht allein durch natürliche Schwankungen erklärt werden kann, sondern durch menschliche Aktivitäten verursacht wird. Ein grosser Teil der gesamten Treibhausgasemissionen wird von der Landwirtschaft und der Lebensmittelproduktion erzeugt. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass insbesondere der Fleischkonsum einen starken, negativen Effekt auf die Umwelt hat. Im Vergleich mit dem vegetarischen Ernährungsstil produziert die omnivore Ernährung durchschnittlich drei Mal mehr CO2eq. Unsere Ernährung hat aber nicht nur einen enormen Einfluss auf die Umwelt, sondern auch auf unsere Gesundheit und auf die Meinung, die andere über uns haben. Frauen, die sich beispielsweise gesund und fettarm ernähren, werden intelligenter eingestuft als Personen, die einen hohen Fettkonsum haben. Diese werden oft als inaktiv bewertet. Im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit wurde untersucht, welchen Einfluss sowohl ein fleischhaltiges Menü verglichen mit einem fleischlosem, als auch ein teures verglichen mit einem günstigen Menü auf die Wahrnehmung eines Paares hat. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass aufgrund des servierten Menüs die Gastgeberpaare statistisch signifikant unterschiedlich bewertet und tatsächlich stereotypisiert werden. Paare, die beispielsweise ein teures, fleischhaltiges Menü bekamen, wurden signifikant grosszügiger als alle anderen eingestuft. Gleichzeitig wurden sie aber auch als signifikant weniger gesundheits- und trendbewusst bewertet. Ein wichtiges Resultat war, dass alle Menüs als gleich angemessen für eine Mahlzeit mit Gästen eingestuft wurden. Die Ergebnisse aus dieser Bachelorarbeit können dazu genutzt werden, um Kommunikationsstrategien zu entwickeln, die das Ziel haben, den Fleischkonsum zu reduzieren. Dies sowohl aus gesundheitlichen Gründen, als auch um die Treibhausgasemissionen weltweit zu senken.

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Nelius Stephan (2019). Ugh! That's really disgusting! - Measuring people's disgust sensitivity using selected odors

Food and Disgust have played an important role from time immemorial. Disgust primarily describes the protection from infections and leads to the rejection of food to protect oneself against possible pathogens and subsequent diseases. Scientific interest in the basic human emotion of disgust increased intensely in the last two decades and its research yielded important insights for various dysfunctional behaviors in our society. Food waste, anorexia nervosa or picky eating are just a few examples for that. Different scales measuring disgust have been developed since then. Most of these scales measure people’s food disgust sensitivity with text-based questionnaires and typical predefined questions. Scales based on a sensory level are limited to a food disgust picture scale. In order to reduce this gap, the present study aimed to develop a measurement tool for disgust sensitivity based on olfactory perception. For that purpose, participants tasted, i.e. smell 9 different odors and rated how disgusting they perceived the odors. Explorative factor analysis and reliability analysis was used to extract 3 odors, which are best suited to measure disgust sensitivity. The study showed that odors about foul/rotten meat were classified as the most disgusting. Thereby an Odor Scale was designed and examined for reliability and validity by using the short Food Disgust Scale and the Neophobia Scale. The correlation of the Odor Scale and the Food Disgust Scale (r = .329) was significant and a bit stronger than the non-significant correlation of the Food Neophobia Scale (r = .125), what we expected before. The Naturalness Scale was used to investigate if disgust is related to preferences of natural products. Finally, we could not find any significant correlation and further relation between these two scales. The newly developed scale will expand the knowledge of food disgust and help to carry out further sensory tests and scales.

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Semadeni Chiara (2019). Kann das Wissen zur Nachhaltigkeit von Lebensmitteln durch einfache Daumenregeln erhöht werden?

Weltweit verursacht die Nahrungsmittelkonsumation rund ein Drittel der Umweltbelastung eines Haushaltes (Tukker & Jansen, 2006). Die tägliche Lebensmittelauswahl eines Konsumenten hat daher ein hohes Potenzial, die Umweltbelastung zu senken (Jungbluth, 2000). Problematisch sind auf Konsumentenseite die bestehenden Wissenslücken über die Klimaauswirkungen von Lebensmitteln (Shi, Visschers, Bumann und Siegrist, 2016). Die vorliegende Arbeit untersuchte, ob Daumenregeln das Wissen über eine nachhaltige Lebensmittelauswahl erhöhen. Darüber hinaus wurden weitere Einflussfaktoren aufgezeigt, welche das Wissen einer nachhaltigen Lebensmittelwahl beeinflussen. Unter Berücksichtigung der bestehenden Forschung wurde eine Onlineumfrage konzipiert (N=512 Versuchspersonen). Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine signifikante Erhöhung des Wissens über eine nachhaltige Lebensmittelauswahl durch Vorgabe von Daumenregeln. Bei Versuchspersonen mit einem höheren Ernährungswissen, einer ökozentrischen Umwelteinstellung oder einem höheren Bildungsniveau resultierte zudem ein signifikant höheres Wissen zur nachhaltigen Lebensmittelauswahl. Für die Förderung einer umweltschonenden und nachhaltigen Lebensmittelauswahl wird daher vorgeschlagen, die Bevölkerung auf diese Daumenregeln aufmerksam zu machen. Daneben sollen Massnahmen zur Erhöhung des Ernährungswissen gefördert werden. Zukünftig sollte die Forschung vermehrt den Fokus auf den Einfluss der Variation und der Komplexität von Daumenregeln zum Wissen einer nachhaltigen Lebensmittelauswahl legen.

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Turnbull Bethan (2019). Validation of a Food Sustainability Knowledge Questionnaire with the Fake Food Buffet

The food sustainability knowledge questionnaire (FSKQ) was recently developed to assess participants theoretical knowledge about the sustainability and environmental friendliness of foods and food production. The main aim of the present study is to validate the FSKQ by means of a fake food study. It is an experimental buffet setting which enables to assess consumers food choices in a standardized manner. The buffet will consist of a whole range of different types of meat, meal alternatives and fish as well as several side dishes. Participants will be instructed to serve themselves a sustainable meal from the buffet. The level of knowledge about food sustainability will be assessed and correlated with the environmental friendliness of the selected menus.

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Khunnutchanart Kewalin (2018). Die Akzeptanz von Insekten als Lebensmittel: Spielt die Fütterung der Insekten eine Rolle?

In den letzten Jahren hat die Verwendung von Insekten als Lebensmittel an Bedeutung gewonnen. Sie sind eine alternative Proteinquelle zum Fleisch und bringen viele ökologische Vorteile mit sich (Megido et al., 2016; Van Huis et al., 2013). Ihre Produktion ist jedoch nur dann beträchtlich nachhaltiger als Fleisch, wenn Lebensmittelabfälle und nicht spezielle Futtermittel für die Aufzucht verwendet werden (Smetana, Palanisamy, Mathys, & Heinz, 2016). Diese Studie untersucht in einem Online-Experiment den Einfluss verschiedener Futtermittel auf die Konsumentenakzeptanz von essbaren Insekten, um das Potenzial von alternativen Futtersubstraten für eine umweltfreundliche und ressourcenschonende Insektenproduktion zu ermitteln. Teilnehmer aus der Deutschschweiz (N = 614) bewerteten die Essbereitschaft, das Ekelempfinden, die Nutzenwahrnehmung und die Risikowahrnehmung für Insekten, welchen eine von vier Futterbedingungen zugeordnet wurden (between-subjects Design). Futtermittel, die präsentiert wurden, waren Lebensmittelabfälle aus der Gastronomie, Lebensmittelabfälle aus dem Supermarkt, Roggenschrot und zertifizierte Futtermittel aus pflanzlichen Stoffen. Es hat sich gezeigt, dass die verschiedenen Futtermittel keinen Einfluss auf die Konsumentenakzeptanz von essbaren Insekten hatten. Mit den gepoolten Daten wurde eine geringe Essbereitschaft, eine tiefe Risikowahrnehmung, eine mittlere Nutzenwahrnehmung und ein relativ hohes Ekelempfinden festgestellt. Des Weiteren werden Insekten mit negativen Assoziationen und Geschmacksvorstellungen in Verbindungen gebracht. Folglich spielt es für die Konsumenten keine Rolle, mit welchem Futtermittel die Insekten gefüttert wurden. Für die Verwendung von Lebensmittelabfällen als Insektenfutter besteht somit Potenzial. Es bedarf dennoch weitere Studien zu diesem Thema, um die Akzeptanz dieser vielversprechenden Nahrungsquelle zu erhöhen.

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Catanho Teixo Jessica (2018). Comparison between different measures of cooking skills and their relationship with food intake and cooking equipment

Today, it is assumed that obesity and bad diet quality are connected to a decline in cooking skills (James, 2008). Although people having access to healthy food and knowledge about food guidelines, which informs people about good eating practices, they seem not to be able to translate food guidelines into actual daily meal preparation. Food management skills, especially cooking skills need more than nutritional knowledge alone. Moreover, an increase in homemade food and cooking skills is considered to be beneficial for our health, which means it improves the diet quality and helps to control the body weight (Hartmann et al., 2013; Raber et al., 2016; Reicks, Trofholz, Stang, & Laska, 2014; Wolfson & Bleich, 2015; Wolfson, Bleich, Smith, & Frattaroli, 2016). Obesity is a worldwide burden that is rising steadily, especially in developed countries with access to ready-to-use food (van der Horst, Brunner, & Siegrist, 2011). Any strategy to avoid obesity and promote home-made cooking is taken into account (Nelson, Corbin, & Nickols-Richardson, 2013). Nevertheless, McGowan et al. (2017) showed that little impact on improved diet quality was recorded in the past few years. Not only food consumption patterns are changing (Blake, Wethington, Farrell, Bisogni, & Devine, 2011) but also lifestyles have become increasingly busy in many industrialized countries, leaving individuals with no time to pursue essential activities of living, like food preparation (Jabs & Devine, 2006; Mechling, Gast, & Fields, 2008). The food industry has reacted by providing convenience products. Convenience food may ease the time spent on home-made meal preparation (Brunner, van der Horst, & Siegrist, 2010), but it is known that ready to eat food is generally of poorer nutritional quality, such as high in fats and sugars, which lastly promotes obesity (Monteiro, Moubarac, Cannon, Ng, & Popkin, 2013; Moodie et al., 2013; Swinburn, Caterson, Seidell, & James, 2004). In addition, this shift in food preparation is associated with lower intakes of fruit and vegetables and micronutrients, like folate and vitamin A (Larson, Perry, Story, & Neumark-Sztainer, 2006; Wolfson & Bleich, 2015). Several factors are discussed as responsible to hinder the development of cooking skills, such as lack of time, dislike for cooking, preferred eating out, affordability of healthy food and wide availability of convenience food (Brunner et al., 2010; Monsivais, Aggarwal, & Drewnowski, 2014; Peltner & Thiele, 2018; Warde, Cheng, Olsen, & Southerton, 2007; Wolfson, Bleich, et al., 2016). Besides, in the past, cooking skills were taught in schools (Stitt, Jepson, & Paulson-Box, 1995), nowadays mothers are reported to be the main source of learning about cooking skills (Caraher, Dixon, Lang, & Carr-Hill, 1999). Therefore, Lyon et al. (2011) observed a decline in cooking skills transmission between generations. Today, it is assumed that obesity and bad diet quality are connected to a decline in cooking skills (James, 2008). Although people having access to healthy food and knowledge about food guidelines, which informs people about good eating practices, they seem not to be able to translate food guidelines into actual daily meal preparation. Food management skills, especially cooking skills need more than nutritional knowledge alone. Moreover, an increase in homemade food and cooking skills is considered to be beneficial for our health, which means it improves the diet quality and helps to control the body weight (Hartmann et al., 2013; Raber et al., 2016; Reicks, Trofholz, Stang, & Laska, 2014; Wolfson & Bleich, 2015; Wolfson, Bleich, Smith, & Frattaroli, 2016). Obesity is a worldwide burden that is rising steadily, especially in developed countries with access to ready-to-use food (van der Horst, Brunner, & Siegrist, 2011). Any strategy to avoid obesity and promote home-made cooking is taken into account (Nelson, Corbin, & Nickols-Richardson, 2013). Nevertheless, McGowan et al. (2017) showed that little impact on improved diet quality was recorded in the past few years. Not only food consumption patterns are changing (Blake, Wethington, Farrell, Bisogni, & Devine, 2011) but also lifestyles have become increasingly busy in many industrialized countries, leaving individuals with no time to pursue essential activities of living, like food preparation (Jabs & Devine, 2006; Mechling, Gast, & Fields, 2008). The food industry has reacted by providing convenience products. Convenience food may ease the time spent on home-made meal preparation (Brunner, van der Horst, & Siegrist, 2010), but it is known that ready to eat food is generally of poorer nutritional quality, such as high in fats and sugars, which lastly promotes obesity (Monteiro, Moubarac, Cannon, Ng, & Popkin, 2013; Moodie et al., 2013; Swinburn, Caterson, Seidell, & James, 2004). In addition, this shift in food preparation is associated with lower intakes of fruit and vegetables and micronutrients, like folate and vitamin A (Larson, Perry, Story, & Neumark-Sztainer, 2006; Wolfson & Bleich, 2015). Several factors are discussed as responsible to hinder the development of cooking skills, such as lack of time, dislike for cooking, preferred eating out, affordability of healthy food and wide availability of convenience food (Brunner et al., 2010; Monsivais, Aggarwal, & Drewnowski, 2014; Peltner & Thiele, 2018; Warde, Cheng, Olsen, & Southerton, 2007; Wolfson, Bleich, et al., 2016). Besides, in the past, cooking skills were taught in schools (Stitt, Jepson, & Paulson-Box, 1995), nowadays mothers are reported to be the main source of learning about cooking skills (Caraher, Dixon, Lang, & Carr-Hill, 1999). Therefore, Lyon et al. (2011) observed a decline in cooking skills transmission between generations.

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Rohrbach Luca (2018). Was beeinflusst die Bewertung der Natürlichkeit von Getreideriegel?

In dieser Arbeit wurde die Natürlichkeit von 30 verschiedenen Getreideriegeln untersucht. Dabei wurde mit Hilfe des, von HERO entwickelten, Food Natural Index (kurz: FNI) eine wissenschaftliche Berechnung der Natürlichkeit für jeden einzelnen Riegel durchgeführt.
Gleichzeitig fand eine Onlineumfrage statt. In dieser Umfrage sollten die Teilnehmer die Natürlichkeit der verschiedenen Riegel beurteilen. Zur Verfügung stand ihnen lediglich ein Bild des Produktes. Anschliessend wurden die erhaltenen Resultate miteinander verglichen und die gefundenen Unterschiede diskutiert. Ein besonderer Fokus wurde dabei auf das Verpackungsdesign gelegt. Es wurden drei Aspekte genauer betrachtet und einzeln diskutiert. Als erstes wurde angeschaut, ob die Verpackung transparente Stellen aufweist und so einen direkten Blick auf den Riegel ermöglicht. War dies der Fall, ging man davon aus, dass das die Bewertungen positiv beeinflusst. Als zweites wurde die Farbe der Verpackung betrachtet, wobei eine blasse Farbgebung einen positiven Effekt haben sollte. Allfällige Label und Aufschriften (z.B. Bio, vegan etc.) wurden zuletzt betrachtet. Hier wurde vermutet, dass diese ebenfalls einen positiven Effekt auf die Bewertungen haben. Ziel der Arbeit war es herauszufinden, ob die Verpackung eines Produktes, dessen Natürlichkeitsbeurteilung positiv beeinflussen kann. Abschliessend diskutierte man einige Produkte genauer, die vom Food Natural Index und von den Umfrageteilnehmern sehr unterschiedlich bewertet wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass alle drei betrachteten Aspekte wichtig sind, für eine hohe Natürlichkeitsbewertung. Ist die Verpackung transparent und der Riegel sichtbar, so fallen die Bewertungen in der Umfrage überdurchschnittlich hoch aus. Die Werte aus der FNI-Berechnung zeigen eine höhere Varianz. Ebenfalls einen Einfluss, wenn auch einen nicht ganz so eindeutig positiven, hat der Aspekt der Verpackungsfarbe. Tendenziell werden zwar blassfarbig verpackte Riegel positiv bewertet, jedoch variieren die Werte recht stark. Dies trifft sowohl für die Umfragewerte, als auch für die FNI-Werte zu. Einen eindeutig positiven Effekt, für die Natürlichkeitsbewertung durch die Umfrageteilnehmer, zeigt der letzte Aspekt. Sind Label und Aufschriften auf der Verpackung zu sehen, so variieren die Werte zwar auch, doch ist deren Varianz sehr eingeschränkt, liegen doch die meisten Werte oberhalb des Mittelwertes. Die Riegel, die keinen der soeben erwähnten Aspekte auf ihrer Verpackung zeigen, erhalten generell tiefe Werte bei der Umfragebewertung, als auch bei der FNI-Berechnung. Abschliessend lässt sich also sagen, dass das Verpackungsdesign eine Rolle bei der Natürlichkeitswahrnehmung zu spielen scheint. Alle genauer betrachteten Aspekte scheinen einen positiven Effekt zu haben. Sie alle führen dazu, dass die Konsumenten die Natürlichkeit des Produktes höher bewerten, als in deren Abwesenheit. Die FNI-Berechnung ist selbstverständlich verpackungsdesignunabhängig und legt den Fokus auf die Zutaten und Inhaltsstoffe der Riegel.

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Peterhans Vega (2018). Food Disgust Elicitation Using Chocolate Tasting in Virtual Reality.

Food disgust has become a relevant research topic since it has lead to important findings concerning research on psychopathologies, obsessive-compulsive disorder or acceptance of novel foods. This study focused on food disgust sensitivity and connected it to research on virtual reality. We tested the influence of potentially disgust-eliciting virtual environments on food disgust behavior. Participants were asked to wear a head-mounted display, called HTC (High Tech Computer Corporation) Vive. They were served a piece of chocolate while either confronting a virtual environment from the control or the experimental condition. The control condition showed a piece of chocolate on a white table and the experimental condition showed a dog producing a dog feces, in the same shape of the chocolate piece, on a lawn. 100 people participated among them 54 women and 46 men, from 18 to 62 years. After recording the participants’ decision to try the chocolate or not, short Food Disgust and Food Disgust Picture scales (chapter 1.4) and presence subscales by Makransky (chapter 1.6.2) had to be filled in. There were significant differences found between control and experimental conditions regarding the decision of trying the chocolate or not. Moreover, there was a significant correlation found between the refusal of chocolate and the score of the physical and self presence subscales by Markansky. These findings show that a virtual environment elicits a disgust reaction and the factor of presence had a strong influence on the participant’s decision to eat the chocolate or not. A significant relation was found between the score on the Food Disgust Scale and the refusal to try the chocolate. It should be further investigated if the experimental virtual environment increased disgust sensitivity or if food disgust sensitivity influenced the perception of the virtual environment. This work advances our understanding of the influence of food disgust sensitivity on food decisions in virtual environments. Further investigations should focus in deciphering the role of the experimental virtual environment in the increase of food disgust sensitivity.

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Camenzind Muriel (2018). Natürlichkeit von Lebensmitteln in der Werbung.

Die Arbeit legt die gesetzlichen Grundlagen bezüglich dem Umgang mit Natürlichkeit bei der Beschriftung und Bewerbung von Lebensmitteln dar. Da Natürlichkeit nicht für alle Bereiche definiert ist, kommt es zu Konflikten zwischen Konsumenten und Produzenten. Verbraucher wünschen sich möglichst naturbelassene Lebensmittel, welches so wenige künstliche Zusatzstoffe wie möglich enthalten. Produzenten sind absatzorientiert und setzen gerne Zusatzstoffe ein, die ihre Produkte länger haltbar machen etc. Die Präferenz der Konsumenten nach natürlichen Lebensmitteln und ihre damit verbunden hohe Zahlungsbereitschaft verleiten Produzenten dazu, ihre Produkte möglichst natürlich erscheinen zu lassen. In der Werbung stehen ihnen verschiedene Mittel wie das Zutatenverzeichnis, Slogans und Logos, Abbildungen von frischen Zutaten oder Landschaften und die Farbe Grün zur Verfügung. In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, wie die genannten Werbemethoden bei den ungekühlten Fertigund Instantsuppen sowie bei gekühlten Fertigkaffees und Mineralwässern angewandt werden. Jedoch sagt die Arbeit nicht eindeutig, welche Wirkung diese Werbemittel bei den Konsumenten tatsächlich erzielen. Diese Arbeit basiert auf einer Literaturrecherche, wobei auch Verpackungen von Lebensmitteln, Printwerbung und Werbespots beachtet wurden.

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Biagioli Valentina (2018). How Much Inforamation is Needed to Evaluate the Naturalness of a Product? A Verification Study of the Food Natural Index by Hero AG, Lenzburg.

Naturalness has been proven to be an important feature regarding todays food choices as customers seem to be keener on eating natural than unnatural foods. Therefore, natural claims have become of increasing interest in the food industry for both manufacturers and consumers.
In a previous study, participants were invited to position 30 different food products in a single line to indicate their perception according to an increasing naturalness. The formed rankings were compared to the Food Natural Index (FNI) provided by Hero™ to assess occurring correspondences. Whilst such an experiment is rather expensive, because of the purchase of all food products, and also time-consuming as all the participants have to be invited in house, we wanted to find an alternative to measure the consumers perception of naturalness. In the present study, we focused on creating an online survey, that investigates if the participants’ perception of naturalness is similar when only given a brief description of the food products, instead of showing them the products physically. The knowledge gained by comparing the rankings from both approaches, also to the FNI, could help to understand more on the insight of participants’ perceptions on natural foods, and to find out, if in future it could be possible to replace some of the effortful experiments with similarly constructed, but simpler and less costly, online surveys.
In comparing the FNI to the means from the experiment, a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0,811 resulted, and was thus more accurate than the R2 resulting from the FNI plotted against the means from the survey at 0,339. Therefore, the results showed that in replacing a physical evaluation of the foods’ naturalness by an online survey, the mean values differed from one another. This is because in the first approach, participants were provided with further information regarding ingredients, branding and packaging, whereas in the survey the participants only had a brief description of the respective products. These findings lead to the rankings being different to one another, but also divergent from the rankings converted from the provided FNI values. This leads to the conclusion, that the substitution of the experiment with an online survey conducted in this form, is not ideal.
Further research could consist in providing the participants of the online survey with important information concerning used ingredients, and perhaps pictures regarding the packaging and branding of the products. This could possibly lead to similar results as obtained in the experiment.

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Germeaux Caroline Marie (2018). Der Einfluss von Farben bei Verpackungen auf die wahrgenommene Natürlichkeit von Lebensmitteln.

Die Natürlichkeit ist ein Thema, das in den letzten Jahren wieder vermehrt das Interesse vieler Konsumenten geweckt hat. Um diesem Trend nachzukommen, versuchen viele Anbieter, ihre Produkte als natürlich zu vermarkten. Um dies gezielt umsetzen zu können, muss bekannt sein, was der Käufer überhaupt unter Natürlichkeit versteht, weshalb viel Forschung in diesem Bereich getrieben wird. In Geschäften kommt es vor allem auf die Verpackung der Produkte an, wie Lebensmittel wahrgenommen werden. Einer dieser Verpackungsaspekte ist die Farbe. Gerade Grün wird stark mit Natürlichkeit und Natur in Verbindung gesetzt. Dieses Experiment hatte zum Ziel herauszufinden, was für einen Einfluss die Farbe Grün auf die wahrgenommene Natürlichkeit von Lebensmitteln hat. Dafür wurden Fotos von Produkten mit einem Bildbearbeitungsprogramm so verändert, dass sie mehr grüne Farbelemente enthielten. Mittels Online-Fragebogen wurden die Attribute Natürlichkeit, Gesundheit, Umweltfreundlichkeit, Attraktivität, Kaufbereitschaft und Erkennen im Zusammenhang mit der Verpackungsfarbe analysiert. Sowohl die originalen wie die grünen Produkte wurden hierfür bewertet. Die Grüne Farbe hatte auf keines der Attribute einen statistisch signifikanten Einfluss. Dafür konnten starke Korrelationen nach Pearson (p < .001) zwischen der Bewertung der Gesundheit und der Natürlichkeit (r = .854), der Umweltfreundlichkeit und der Natürlichkeit (r = .744), der Attraktivität und der Natürlichkeit (r = .706), sowie der Kaufbereitschaft und der Natürlichkeit (r = .564) festgestellt werden. Es wurde beobachtet, dass die Natürlichkeit von Lebensmitteln vor allem Frauen und älteren Leuten besonders wichtig ist. Der Aspekt der Gesundheit wurde am stärksten mit Natürlichkeit in Verbindung gesetzt, und scheint der Punkt zu sein, der die meisten Leute anspricht, inklusive die, die sich nicht so stark für Natürlichkeit interessieren. Um dem Trend zu folgen, sollten Produkte also gesünder und umweltfreundlicher erscheinen. Die resultierende Natürlichkeitswahrnehmung würde konsequent das Produkt attraktiver erscheinen lassen, und den Konsumenten zum Kauf veranlassen. Die grüne Farbe allein scheint allerdings nicht auszureichen, um diesen Effekt zu erzielen.

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Nick Svenja M. (2018). Perception of Naturalness in regard to different Production Standards.

Naturalness is an important point for consumers, because of the assumed health benefits and environmental friendliness. Sustainable food consumption becomes more and more important in our daily life, therefore the consumption of organic food increases and as a response, the organic food marked has grown over the last few years. Studies have shown that the perception of organic food labels plays an important role in consumers trust and willingness to pay. However, in some situations it is difficult for the consumer to evaluate the labels on products. The current state of research is that just a few results are available on the specific topic of consumers perception of naturalness of organic labels, and even fewer results are available about Swiss organic labels. This study analyzes consumers perception of naturalness in regard to different production standards, including the most prevalent labels in Switzerland. For the various production standards, the following labels are used: Demeter, IP-Suisse, Terra Suisse, Bio Suisse, Migros Bio, Naturaplan and EU-Bio. An online survey should show the familiarity of the participants with the labels and how natural they perceive the various label types. The survey results should also show whether there are differences between the different labels in perceived naturalness and evaluate possible reason for these differences. In the discussion the focus was especially paced on the participant’s attention to label, gender, perceived naturalness, buying frequency an knowledge in general and according to the seven labels. Our study concluded that if consumers generally pay attention to labels, they are more likely to perceive a labelled product as more natural than an unlabelled one. In relation to the tested labels, all labelled food items were perceived as more natural than a generic unlabelled one. Moreover, the EU-Bio label was perceived as significantly less natural than the Demeter, IP-Suisse and Terra Suisse label and was additionally chosen as the label with the weakest guidelines. In contrast to this, Demeter was selected as the label with the strictest guidelines. In the second label group, Naturaplan was perceived as significantly less natural than Bio Suisse. In general, relationships between the perceived naturalness and buying frequency, label familiarity could be stated.

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Nussbaum Natalie (2018). Food Contamination Suspiciousness - How Strong Is Disgust Experienced in Food Situations where it Is Unlikely that the Food was Contaminated?

Disgust describes the defense mechanism against diseases and primarily results in food rejection. The function of disgust in correlation to food contamination suspiciousness is not well understood. On the one hand, there is no scale that specifically describes the suspiciousness of food contamination and on the other hand, the existing scale developed by Rozin et al. to measure food contamination describes situations that are in our eyes perceived as unrealistic. The present study aimed to develop a new measuring instrument to analyze this correlation more precisely by also referring to the 'law of contagion', meaning that a neutral object can receive a disgust label by being in contact with a disgust stimulus, even if no visible trace remains. Thus, we developed a scale that aims to analyze food contamination suspiciousness more closely. An online study, which included 15 self-developed items on food contamination suspiciousness, as well as five further scales for comparison, was carried out with 344 participants. Exploratory factor analysis was used to develop a Food Contamination Suspiciousness subscale including six items describing situations of food becoming contaminated, i.e. through 'disgusting' food, living things or being in contact with 'disgusting' objects. The subscale showed good internal consistency across the sample with a Cronbach’s alpha of .819. Construct validity was confirmed by measuring the correlation between the created subscale and scales such as the Food Disgust Scale, Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Scale and others. The new subscale will help improve and expand the knowledge of food contamination suspiciousness.

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Nesa Valentina (2018). Is flying for a wellness weekend to Miami more acceptable if I drive a Prius?

The world is nowadays faced with many environmental challenges, such as depletion of natural resources, pollution of air and water, and climate change. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that anthropogenic emissions resulting from human activities were substantially increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and thus, added to the naturally occurring “greenhouse effect”, causing an increase of global warming. With the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, over 160 countries recognized their contribution to global warming and began to assume their responsibilities. Industrialized countries also adopted legally binding emission reduction targets for greenhouse gases (Breidenich, Magraw, Rowley, & Rubin, 1998). The Paris Agreement stipulated during the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris (COP21) at the end of 2015, which entered into force the 4th November 2016, also signs a milestone in the climate policy. In total, nearly 200 nations agreed with the “2⁰ Celsius target”, which aims to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Moreover, these countries set themselves the objective to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5⁰ Celsius (Kinley, 2016). To achieve this common target, countries from all parts of the world have been developing specific plans and strategies. Measures such as the promotion of energy efficiency and a transition from fossil to renewable energies are crucial in order to reach this goal.

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Fuchs Claudia (2018). Disgusting Food - a Virtual Reality Experiment

The aim of this study was to find out whether disgust could be induced in a Virtual Reality environment and if visual cues influenced participants’ sensory perception and liking of a product. The visual cue was the colour of a banana juice, using brown juice as a disgusting visual cue, implying spoiled or old juice. A Virtual Reality (VR) system (HTC Vive) was used to conduct the study. With VR, stimuli always stayed the same and it was possible to change the colour of the juice without having to use food dye and changing its sensory properties. This allowed full control of conditions in the experiment. The study was conducted in December 2017 with 99 subjects, aged between 18 and 60 years (M = 24, SD = 7.75). Contrary to our expectations, 26 people preferred the brown juice to the yellow one. Overall, the yellow juice was not liked significantly more than the brown juice. The findings of this study lead to the assumption that disgust was not induced and that the test design could be further improved. The banana juice did not elicit disgust as no one refused to try the juice. Because there was no clear preference for the yellow juice and also no significant difference in the liking of the juices, we conclude that the brown banana juice was not perceived as old but sweeter and therefore more likeable.

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Nadin Schweizer (2018). Factors Influencing Climate Change Risk Perception: The Effects of Gain and Loss Framing, Human- and Nature-caused Climate Change Beliefs and Personal Experience

This study examines the effect of gain and loss framed messages and the interaction with climate change beliefs and personal experience on the public risk perception and the intention towards environmental engagement. An online study on a sample of 475 participants was conducted including a one-time exposure of a framed text on climate change. The results show that the effect of the framing on the risk perception is dependent on the belief in the cause of climate change. The loss-frame prompts participants, that believe in human-caused climate change, to perceive the risk as more severe. If the climate change belief is more towards nature-caused, then the effect of framing is eliminated. The effect of framing on the intention towards environmental engagement, however, is independent of the belief in the cause of climate change and a gain-frame increases the support for a climate adaptation measure. Personal experience with climate change can also help to increase the intention to engage in climate activism. The paper recommends that climate change communication should focus on gain-framing and enhance personal experience to achieve a higher public environmental engagement. 

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Pleines Salomé (2017). Disgusting Food - An Eye-Tracking Study

Disgust acts as a defence mechanism against diseases and is primarily a food rejection. Food disgust affects consumers in their everyday life, but not much has been researched on the subject. The present thesis aims to fill some of the gaps in the food disgust literature by investigating the possible relationship between food disgust sensitivity and a specific viewing behaviour while watching and rating neutral and disgust eliciting food pictures using an eye-tracker. A sample size of hundred participants were recruited to view twenty-four photographs separated in five different blocks. Participants were further requested to complete an online survey including one assessment their food disgust sensitivity. Results show that the disgust rating of each disgust eliciting picture correlates positively at the .01 level (two-tailed) with the food disgust sensitivity. Correlation coefficients for these images range from .33 to .52. Results from the eye-tracking experiment show a decreased average fixation time while viewing disgusting food pictures and an increased change of focus characterized by an increased number of fixations and saccades occurring during the observation of neutral food images. This supports the hypothesis of a relationship between specific viewing behaviours while looking at disgusting food pictures and food disgust sensitivity, leading towards a clearer understanding of the way food disgust works and ultimately on how consumers interact with food. 

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Rüegg Nathalie (2017). Bestimmt Ihr Auto darüber wie akzeptabel Ihre Flugreise ist?

Die Senkung des Energieverbrauchs wird zu einem immer wichtigeren Thema. Für die Umsetzung ist es wichtig zu verstehen, wie Konsumenten Entscheidungen im Energiebereich treffen und welche Faktoren möglicherweise einen verzerrenden oder negativen Einfluss auf eine energiefreundliche Entscheidungsfindung haben können. Diese Studie hat zum Ziel das Phänomen des Symbolkraft-Trugschlusses (symbolic significance fallacy), bei dem symbolisch aussagekräftige Merkmale überbewertet werden, mit der moralischen Lizensierung - der Tendenz, unmoralisches Verhalten mit früheren moralisch guten Taten zu rechtfertigen - zu verbinden. In einer Online-Befragung wurden den Teilnehmern zwei Szenarien zum Mobilitätsverhalten von Energiekonsumenten präsentiert. Diese beschrieben jeweils ein symbolisch neutrales (z.B. das Zurücklegen einer bestimmten Strecke) und ein symbolisch aussagekräftiges verhaltensbezogenes Merkmal (z.B. das Fahren eines Toyota Prius). Für jedes Szenario mussten die Teilnehmer den mit diesem Mobilitätsverhalten verbundenen Energiekonsum der Person einschätzen. Danach wurde ihnen die Beschreibung eines anschliessenden Flugverhaltens derselben Person vorgelegt und die Teilnehmer sollten die Angemessenheit dieses Flugverhaltens beurteilen. Wie erwartet, wurde einem Energiekonsumenten, der ein positiv symbolisch aussagekräftiges und negatives symbolisch neutrales Verhalten zeigte, ein niedrigerer Energieverbrauch zugeschrieben als einem Energiekonsumenten mit einem negativen symbolisch aussagekräftigen und einem positiven symbolisch neutralen Verhalten. Dies obwohl der Energiekonsum der beiden Personen gleich hoch war. Dies zeigt, dass die symbolisch neutralen Informationen unterschätzt und die symbolisch aussagekräftigen überbewertet wurden. In Einklang mit der Affektheuristik stellte sich heraus, dass den durch das symbolische Verhalten ausgelösten Gefühlen dabei eine mediierende Wirkung zukommt. Des Weiteren weisen die Studienergebnisse auf einen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Symbolkraft-Trugschluss und der moralischen Lizensierung hin. So wurde der Person, mit dem positiv symbolisch aussagekräftigen Verhalten, tendenziell auch eine höhere Legitimierung des Flugverhaltens zugeschrieben. Damit liefert die Studie weitere Beweise für den Symbolkraft-Trugschluss und seine Auswirkungen.

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Schmidt Philomene (2017). Wahrnehmung von Insektenkonsumenten

Entomophagie bezeichnet den Verzehr von Insekten als Nahrungsquelle. In der westlichen Welt gehören Insekten nicht auf den Speiseplan trotz des hohen Gehalts an ungesättigten Fettsäuren, Mineralien, Eisen und Proteinen (Rumpold et al., 2013). Fehlende Akzeptanz (DeFoliart, 1999) und das Empfinden von Ekel und Angst gegenüber Insekten (Yen, 2009) sind Gründe für den Nichtkonsum. Auch Richtlinien der Gesellschaft könnten dafür verantwortlich sein, da das individuelle Essverhalten von gesellschaftlichen Normen beeinflusst wird (Roth, & Polivy, 2003). Während über die Wahrnehmung von Vegetariern im Vergleich zu Fleischessern schon einiges publiziert wurde, ist über die Wahrnehmung von Insektenkonsumenten in der westlichen Welt bis heute wenig bekannt. Angenommen wird, dass Insektenkonsumenten wegen der negativen Wahrnehmung von Insekten ein schlechtes Bild in der Gesellschaft haben. 

Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist es, zu untersuchen, wie Insektenkonsumenten im Vergleich zu Vegetariern und Fleischessern wahrgenommen werden. Um dies zu eruieren, wurde ein Fragebogen nach dem Vorbild von Haire, 1950 und Saher et al., 2004, erstellt. Eine hypothetische Person wurde anhand einer Einkaufsliste beschrieben und musste von den Studienteilnehmern mittels Adjektiven charakterisiert werden. Die Einkaufsliste war in drei verschiedenen Versionen verfügbar, eine für Insektenkonsumenten, eine für Vegetarier und eine für Fleischesser. Die Teilnehmer wurden zufällig auf die verschiedenen Versionen des Fragebogens aufgeteilt. Die finale Teilnehmerzahl betrug 598. 

Insektenkonsumenten wurden bezüglich Attraktivität, Sympathie und Bereitschaft für gemeinsames Essen im Vergleich zu Vegetariern und Fleischessern schlechter bewertet, jedoch als am umweltfreundlichsten, sportlichsten, gebildetsten, mutigsten, offensten und interessantesten eingestuft. Die Wahrnehmung von Insektenkonsumenten ist positiver als angenommen. 

Das Bild von Vegetariern hat sich im Laufe der Zeit stark geändert (Ruby, 2012). So ist es gut möglich, dass auch das Bild von Insektenkonsumenten zukünftig noch positiver wird. Gemäss dem neuen Lebensmittelrecht werden im Verlauf des Jahres 2017 drei Insektenarten in der Schweiz als Lebensmittel zugelassen. Das bietet eine Möglichkeit, Insekten als Nahrungsmittel populärer zu machen, was sich positiv auf das Image von Insektenkonsumenten auswirken könnte.

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Schmucki Julia (2017). Testing of a Virtual Food Shop for Food Choice Experiments

With the newly developed Virtual Food Shop, the selection behavior of a food product was observed. The aim was to show, that an experiment in a virtual setting results in the same behavior as in a real life setting, as shown in previous studies. Furthermore, the influence of a health and a taste motivation in selection behavior was compared. With the help of a built-in eyetracker in the virtual reality glasses, the gaze direction and duration could be monitored. The experiment was conducted with 32 participants in a between-subjects study design. The participants were divided into two groups and given different assignments, which resulted in either a health or a taste motivation.

More participants with a health motivation were interested in looking for nutrition information and also took out significantly more packages (4.4) compared to the taste motivated participants (2.5). Additionally, they looked slithly longer at nutrition information, than the taste motivated group and also had a longer mean dwell time to fulfil their task. These results suggest a similar behavior of consumers in real life and in a virtual environment. Studies in behavior research could, in the future, be designed for the virtual world and would become less complex, cheaper, and further, more environment friendly, due to less food waste.

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Furtwaengler Patricia (2017). How Do Consumers Assess the Healthiness of Cereals – With and Without Time Pressure?

Many of the most severe health issues worldwide arise due to overweight and obesity. Even though widely discussed, their prevalence is still rising. It should be questioned whether con-sumers have enough nutritional knowledge to decide what is healthy or not. One group of consumers who are apparently able to do so, are the ones who eat cereals for breakfast. They are generally said to lead a healthier lifestyle and have a lower body mass index (BMI). Nev-ertheless, not all cereals are of the same healthiness. To decide whether a cereal is healthy as a whole and which properties are particularly relevant can be rather difficult for consumers. To find an effective approach in nutritional education, it is therefore important to know how con-sumers assess the healthiness of cereals. In the experiment being assessed in this thesis, 120 students were asked to rank 30 cereals in order of perceived healthiness. The participants were separated into two groups: one with a time limit of five minutes and one without any time constraint. The outcome was then analysed by multidimensional unfolding. This ap-proach aimed to reveal the underlying dimensions of health perception. For the group without any time limit, a two-dimensional solution was found. A one-dimensional solution was cho-sen for the group with time pressure. However, this group showed a much higher error vari-ance and therefore, further analysis of the experiment concentrated on the group without time pressure. The dimensions of the group without time pressure were studied by property fitting. The goal was to determine the variables that best explained the dimensions. For dimension 1, only chocolate content was found to be a significant predictor and for dimension 2 both choc-olate and sugar content appeared to be appropriate explanations for the perceived healthiness. The participants made statements that they had used several more criteria to evaluate the healthiness of the cereals. However, this was not confirmed when using regression analysis. It was also remarkable that many cereals were ranked as healthy by some and as unhealthy by other participants even though they had all stated to have used similar criteria for the sorting task. Using these findings, we can conclude that people rely on very few aspects when as-sessing the healthiness of cereals and are unable to integrate the criteria perfectly. Strikingly, negative drivers such as sugar and chocolate content have a much bigger impact on health perception than possible positive drivers, as for example the naturalness of the product. There is a lack of simple and easily comprehensible information about both positive and negative aspects of cereals products. This information should be provided by both producers and the government in order to enable the consumers to make accurate assessments about the healthi-ness of the cereals.

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Viladevall Laia (2017). Consumers' perception of free from food labels

In this paper, consumers' associations with free from food labels will be evaluated. Such type of labelling has experienced considerable growth in recent years, which reveals an urgent need for more information and better understanding of consumers' perceptions on the topic. Because this is a very recent subject, little research can be found on the effects that free from levels have and how they influence consumers. This evaluation was made on the basis of a case study carried out in four European countries, where consumers were asked to make associations with four different free from labels: gluten, lactose, palm oil and GMOs. These associations were then categorised and the results in the different countries were compared. This paper aims to show how much importance and attention consumers pay to free from labels, and thus allow better understanding of their behaviour.

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Brenig Katharina (2016). Nutrient profiling of consumers' food choices of a fake food experiment

Nutrient profiling is the classification of foods based on their nutrient composition. It serves various purposes. For instance, one application of nutrient profiling is on food labels which help people to choose a healthy diet and thus can improve the quality of their diet. Another application of nutrient profiling is the evaluation of a person’s overall diet quality. In this bachelor thesis, the diet quality of participants’ food choices was calculated to examine participants’ understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet. Three different nutrient profiling methods from Lobstein and Davies (2008), Streppel et al. (2014) and Arsenault et al. (2012) were applied. Additionally, the relationship between diet quality and demographic and diet-related variables were investigated. The data for this bachelor thesis were derived from a previous fake food experiment (N = 187 participants, 51.9% female, 19-63 years old) where the participants chose either a healthy and balanced diet (“healthy” group) or a diet for a normal day (control group). The results showed that the three diet quality indices measure the same construct and were comparable to values from the previous literature. However, it should be considered that even small variations in nutritional values (e.g., similar products from different countries) could have an effect on the reproducibility of the scores. Furthermore, as expected, the results indicated that the participants in the “healthy” group had higher diet quality index scores than the participants in the control group. Due to the assumption that the average nutrition knowledge is the same in both groups, it can be said that participants of the control group seemed not to be sufficiently motivated to implement their nutrition knowledge into their daily food choices.  Different as expected, the results show that the diet quality is not predicted by demographic and diet-related variables.  

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Brandt Christelle (2016). Which is the most important meal of the day?

The saying ‘the breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ has existed at least since the publication of Lenna Cooper’s 1917 article in Good Health. Since then, many have tried to shed light on the topic, but the precise formulations of these studies have varied as much as their conclusions. In this thesis, the diet quality of different meal types was compared. The data was derived from a previous fake food experiment (N = 91 participants, 53.8 percent female, 18-65 years old), in which participants were asked to select their own diet for one day, representing their typical eating habits. The results show that the diet quality of snacks was lower than that of the other meal types. The experiment also provides evidence that some personal variables such as liking of fruits and vegetables were significantly associated with a higher diet quality of snacks eaten between meals. Among other things, these findings show that the promotion of healthy eating should focus on snacks eaten between meals, which seem to be the most critical meal types regarding diet quality.

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Scheidegger Rahel (2016). Untersuchung von Einflussfaktoren auf die Häufigkeit des Konsums von Fleisch und von Fleischersatzprodukten sowie auf den Willen, Fleisch zu substituiren

Der Konsum von Fleisch steht im Mittelpunkt vieler Diskussionen. Der Fleischkonsum hat ne-gative Auswirkungen, beispielsweise auf die Umwelt, auf das Wohl der Tiere und auf die Ge-sundheit der Menschen. Es ist deshalb erstrebenswert, den Fleischkonsum der Bevölkerung zu senken.
Mit der vorliegenden Studie sollen die Einflussfaktoren auf den Fleischkonsum, auf den Konsum von Fleischersatzprodukten sowie auf den Willen, Fleisch zu substituieren untersucht werden. Zudem sollte die ‘Meat Justification Scale’ von Piazza et al. (2015) überprüft werden. Diese identifiziert vier Rationalisierungsstrategien für den Fleischkonsum: Natürlichkeit, Nor-malität, Notwendigkeit sowie Köstlichkeit. Dazu wurde eine Online-Studie durchgeführt. Die Teilnehmenden (N=427) beantworteten Fragen und bekamen zufällig einen Text zum Thema Umwelt, Moral oder Gesundheit oder einen Kontrolltext zugeteilt.
Die vier Subskalen der ‘Meat Justification Scale’ konnten nicht herauskristallisiert wer-den. Die Chronbach’s Alphas der Zuverlässigkeitsanalysen der Subskalen waren hingegen gut. Fleisch wird häufiger konsumiert als Fleischersatzprodukte, wobei Frauen weniger Fleisch und mehr Ersatzprodukte konsumieren als Männer. Die Häufigkeit des Fleischkonsums wird beein-flusst durch das Geschlecht sowie durch die Einschätzung der Köstlichkeit. Je köstlicher man Fleisch findet, desto häufiger wird konsumiert. Auf die Konsumhäufigkeit der Fleischersatz-produkte haben zum einen das Alter und zum anderen die Faktoren ‘natürlich’, ‘normal’ und ‘köstlich’ einen signifikanten Einfluss. Je älter man ist, desto weniger Fleischersatzprodukte werden konsumiert. Es werden zudem weniger Fleischersatzprodukte konsumiert, je köstlicher und natürlicher man Fleisch findet. Umgekehrt werden mehr Ersatzprodukte konsumiert, je normaler man denn Fleischkonsum findet. Der Substitutionswille der Teilnehmenden war eher gering. Er wird beeinflusst durch die Häufigkeit des Fleischkonsums und des Konsums der Ersatzprodukte. Der Substitutionswille ist kleiner, je häufiger man Fleisch konsumiert und grös-ser je häufiger man Fleischersatzprodukte konsumiert. Zudem ist der Substitutionswille gerin-ger, je natürlicher und köstlicher man Fleisch findet. Die Informationstexte hatten keinen Ein-fluss auf den Substitutionswillen und führten auch nicht zu Unterschieden. Die experimentelle Manipulation hat damit nicht funktioniert.

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Rüdisser Cornelia (2015). Consumers' understanding of a healthy and balanced diet

Diet is one aspect associated with certain diseases, which makes a healthy and balanced diet an important issue for public health. To promote healthy eating it is crucial to be familiar with people´s understanding of a healthy and balanced diet. Therefore, an experimental study was conducted at the ETH Zurich. In total, 190 people participated. They were randomly assigned to the “normal” condition (N = 94) and to the “healthy and balanced” condition (N = 96). The participants were offered a fake food buffet and either asked to serve meals for a day like they normally eat or to compose meals which, in their opinion, are healthy and balanced.

The results showed that the participants in the “healthy and balanced” condition chose fewer sweets and energy-dense beverages, but more fruits and fish compared to the “normal” condition. No differences were found concerning the total energy served, the energy served from convenience food and vegetables and the amount of coffee.

To sum it up, the participants had quite a good implicit understanding of a healthy and balanced diet. For public health it is especially important to promote the increased consumption of vegetables.

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Weber Andrea (2015). Consumer Acceptance of Dietary Recommendations

Background: The majority of the Swiss population do not implement the official dietary guidelines. This might be because they have the reputation to be time-consuming, costly and difficult in the implementation in daily life. A survey was administered for assessing the dietary behavior, the acceptance of dietary recommendations and their relationship depending on the demographic variables gender, age, education and income level.
Methods: A questionnaire was developed that contained a Food Frequency Questionnaire, items focusing on the knowledge and self-perceived implementation of the official Swiss dietary guidelines and statements about the acceptance of dietary recommendations in general that were rated on a 6 point Likert scale. The survey was sent to an internet sample (N = 307). For the evaluation of the diet quality, a diet quality indicator was developed for measuring in which extent the official Swiss dietary guidelines are complied. The knowledge of the official dietary recommendations was computed with the number of correctly allocated guidelines. By means of the factor analysis, various scales were formed out of the statements for the assessment of consumer acceptance of dietary recommendations. The findings were compared between the different gender, age, education and income groups.
Results: Diet quality indicator score was mostly insufficient among participants (M = 4.61). High-quality diet was associated with female gender. Women (p < 0.001) and people under 30 years (p < .01) showed a significantly higher knowledge of the official dietary guidelines than men and people older than 31 years. The participants tended to assess the topic of nutrition and dietary recommendations in daily as quite difficult and confusing (M = 4.28), especially men (M = 4.42, p <0.05), but they had the tendency to have a weak conviction that the implementation of dietary recommendations has health benefits (M = 3.08). The participants showed that they tend to trust in nutritional scientists (M = 3.50) and to have a slightly more positive attitude towards dietary recommendations (M = 3.26). The participants tended to perceive personal barriers as facile to overcome (M = 3.16).
Conclusions: Our results indicated that most of the participants were far away from meeting the official Swiss dietary guidelines regularly. The knowledge of the dietary guidelines and the perceived personal barriers were significant variables for predicting diet quality. But nutritional knowledge gaps were widely spread. It could be assumed that dietary recommendations do not have a bad reputation with the participants. The hypothesis that people mistrust nutritional scientist could not be confirmed and seemed not to be a reason for non-compliance.

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Marinello Max (2015). Demographic and health-related correlates of eating self-prepared meals

In recent years, the time spent preparing food has significantly decreased. This is regarded as a critical factor in relation to the quality of one’s diet.

The aim of this study is to investigate to what extend socio-demographic and healthrelated factors are related to the consumption of self-prepared meals at home. A questionnaire was conducted in a random sample of Swiss citizens reflects a total of 597 respondents (43.6% males) with a mean age of 57.9 years (SD = 15.76, range 18-96). The sample was questioned about their eating habits and socio-demographic circumstances.

The results showed that participants who consume self-prepared meals at home on a daily basis, tend to eat healthier as opposed to those who consume meals from elsewhere. This group mostly consists of elderly people and particularly women who are assumed to have the highest cooking skills. One sign therefore is the fact that they consume less beverages, which are rich in terms of sugar. Moreover, they opt to
consume fresh food such as salad and vegetables instead of fast food. In respect of body weight, no significant correlation was found between BMI and self-prepared meals. Nevertheless, the chance of eating healthily seems to be enhanced through daily intake of self-prepared food from home.

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von Siebenthal Hanna (2015). Was sind sozial nachhaltige Lebensmittel?

Im Bereich Lebensmittelproduktion wurde die soziale Dimension der Nachhaltigkeit bisher nur wenig erforscht, obwohl dies grosse soziale Auswirkungen auf die Produzenten hat. Es fehlt an klaren Kriterien und Indikatoren, um soziale Nachhaltigkeit einheitlich definieren zu können. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit war, Kriterien zu finden um soziale Nachhaltigkeit bei Le-bensmitteln einzuschätzen und die sozialen Auswirkungen von Produzenten aus Import, Fairtrade und der Schweiz zu untersuchen. Hierfür wurden qualitative Experteninterviews mit neun Experten aus den Bereichen Lebensmittelindustrie, Internationaler Handel und For-schung durchgeführt. Diese Studie ergab, dass die Arbeitsbedingungen der Produzenten besonders relevant sind für die soziale Nachhaltigkeit von Lebensmitteln. Bei importierten Produkten trägt das Herkunftsland eine grosse Verantwortung für deren Rahmenbedingun-gen. Transparenz entlang der Wertschöpfungskette ist wichtig, um sozial nachhaltige Le-bensmittel produzieren und importieren zu können. Die soziale Nachhaltigkeit in der Schweiz wird grösstenteils positiv eingeschätzt aufgrund der strengen Gesetzgebung und den guten Arbeitsbedingungen. Das Bewusstsein der Konsumenten für sozial nachhaltige Lebensmittel hat in den letzten Jahren zugenommen, was teilweise zur Verbesserung von den Arbeitsbe-dingungen der Produzenten geführt hat. Weitere Studien könnten durchgeführt werden, in-dem die Lebensmittelproduzenten in den Herkunftsländern über ihre Lebenssituation befragt werden. Aus diesen Ergebnissen könnten zusätzliche relevante Kriterien zur Definition von sozialer Nachhaltigkeit gefunden werden.

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Schmutz Michal (2015). The strength of symbolic meaning in environmental decision-making

In Switzerland, private households are responsible for one third of the total energy consumption (BFE, 2014). In order to substantially reduce the negative environmental impact, their energy conservation seems indispensible. It is therefore crucial to understand how individuals arrive at environmentally-related decisions, especially when it comes to the promotion of sustainable living. This research project is based on the finding that people tend to rely on symbolically meaningful attributes though neglecting other information, a phenomenon called symbolic significance fallacy (Sütterlin & Siegrist, 2014). The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the robustness and strength of people’s reliance on symbolically significant behaviors in energy-related judgments and to investigate its effect on subsequent energy-related decisions. In an online experiment, participants (N = 236) were presented with a car driving and a commuting scenario. For each mobility scenario, they were asked to rate the energy consumption of a person based on a symbolically significant behavioral attribute (e.g., driving a Prius) and a symbolically neutral behavioral attribute of opposing valence (e.g., long annual distance traveled). It was hypothesized that participants’ energy consumption judgments relied on the symbolically significant behavioral attribute independent of an increase in value of the contradicting symbolically neutral information (e.g., even longer annual distance traveled). In a second step, participants were presented with the consumer’s subsequent energy-unfriendly behavior (e.g., occasional air journeys to Berlin) and were asked to indicate how legitimate they perceive this behavior. As expected, the energy consumption was rated higher when the consumer showed a positive as opposed to a negative symbolically significant behavior, although the descriptions did not differ in energy consumption. The misleading effect of the behavioral attribute of strong symbolic meaning remained constant independent of a change in the value of the contradicting symbolically neutral information. Furthermore, participants with a higher proenvironmental self-identity showed a stronger symbolic significance bias. Empirical evidence was also found for the interplay between the symbolic significance bias and moral compensation processes. However, whereas respondents showed the tendency to license the consumer showing a positive as opposed to a negative symbolically significant behavior in the commuting scenario, the opposite effect was found in the car driving scenario. This study offers support for the remarkable robustness and strength of the symbolic significance fallacy and its effect on subsequent decisions.

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Hanimann Linda (2014). Untersuchung der Anforderungen, um eine produkt-spezifische Emotionsliste zu entwickeln: Erste Resultate einer Ähnlichkeits-Sortieraufgabe

Emotionen spielen immer häufiger eine wichtige Rolle, wenn es darum geht Lebensmittel- und Getränkeprodukte zu charakterisieren und zu differenzieren. Es wurden bereits diverse Emotionslexiken zu diesem Zweck erstellt, welche jedoch häufig auf Wortsammlungen aus der Literatur basieren. Im Jahr 2015 wurde von Gmuer et al. eine neue systematische, sprach-basierte Methode entwickelt, um ein Emotionslexikon zu erstellen. Mittels einer Onlineumfrage zur Relevanz dieser Begriffe wurde die anfängliche Liste aus 272 Emotionswörtern auf 49 Begriffe gekürzt (Top49). Da diese Liste jedoch viele Wörter mit ähnlicher Bedeutung enthält, war das Ziel dieser Arbeit die total 90 positiven Emotionswörter der Liste von Gmuer et al. (2015) zu kürzen. Dazu wurde mit 47 Teilnehmern eine Ähnlichkeits-Sortieraufgabe mit zwei verschiedenen Bedingungen durchgeführt. In der produkt-spezifischen Bedingung wurden die Teilnehmer angewiesen, an Schokolade zu denken und in der produkt-unspezifischen Bedingung waren die Teilnehmer frei, an irgendein Lebensmittel- oder Getränkeprodukt zu denken. Diese Bedingungen wurden so gewählt, um als zweites Ziel dieser Arbeit den Einfluss der Produkt-Spezifität auf die wahrgenommene Ähnlichkeit von Emotionswörtern zu untersuchen. Die Resultate zeigten, dass die Ähnlichkeitsbewertung nicht von der Produkt-Spezifität der Sortierungsinstruktion abhängt. Daraus folgt, dass auf der Ebene einer Ähnlichkeits-Sortieraufgabe der Aspekt der Produkt-Spezifität keine Rolle spielt. Die gekürzte Liste mit 40 positiven Emotionswörtern enthält weniger Begriffe mit ähnlicher Bedeutung als die Top49 von Gmuer et al. (2015) und ist somit heterogener geworden. Zudem besitzt sie eine höhere Übereinstimmung mit dem EsSense ProfileTM von King und Meiselman (2010) als die positiven der Top49 von Gmuer et al. (2015). Die Übereinstimmung (36.0%) ist jedoch immer noch sehr gering, was auf methodische und kulturelle Differenzen zurück zu führen ist. Falls weiterführende Untersuchungen im Bereich der Sensorik gemacht werden wollen und man sich nur für die positiven Emotionswörter interessiert, ist es möglich, bereits mit dieser Liste zu arbeiten.

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Beck Malgorzata (2014). Konsumentenakzeptanz von ausgewählten Campylobacter Reduktionsstrategien im Geflügelfleisch

Campylobacteriose, die häufigste bakterielle gastro-intestinale Erkrankung in der Schweiz, wird durch ein Bakterium namens Campylobacter ausgelöst. Da das Bakterium häufig im Geflügel vorkommt, wurden weltweit verschiedene Strategien zur Campylobacter-Senkung im Hühnerfleisch entwickelt. Das Ziel der Arbeit war, die Konsumentenakzeptanz gegenüber den ausgewählten Massnahmen zur Campylobacter-Senkung zu untersuchen beziehungsweise die Einflussfaktoren auf die Akzeptanz der Massnahmen zu definieren. Darüber hinaus wurde untersucht, ob die Information über Campylobacter einen Einfluss auf die Akzeptanz der Massnahmen hat. Als Methode wurden qualitative Interviews eingesetzt. Die Befragten (N=13) wurden durch convenience sampling ausgewählt. Die Studie ergab, dass weitere Massnahmen zur Betriebshygiene, Information der Verbraucher und Verbraucherinnen sowie verbindliche Hygienehinweise auf den Verpackungen auf die grösste Akzeptanz der Befragten stossen, gleichwohl sie nicht als sehr effizient eingestuft wurden. Im Gegenzug finden die als effizient wahrgenommenen Massnahmen, wie die Bahandlung des Fleisches mit Chlor und ionisierenden Strahlen wenig Akzeptanz. Die Information über Campylobacter änderte nichts an der Einstellung der Befragten zu den Massnahmen. Als Einflussfaktoren auf die Akzeptanz der Massnahmen wurden Natürlichkeit der Massnahme, Wissen, Vertrauen, Kontrolle sowie wahrgenommene Vorteile und Gefahren der Massnahmen diskutiert. Die Ergebnisse liefern einen guten Ausgangspunkt für die weitere Forschung, wie zum Beispiel quantitative Befragungen.

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Maager Fiona (2014). Consumers’ perception of Swiss eco-labels

The consumer behaviour with regard to eco-labeled food products has already been widely investigated. Human health, awareness of the environment, animal welfare concerns, and a product’s taste and quality are the main drivers that lead consumers to purchase eco-labeled food products. On the contrary, high prices and lack of knowledge represent meaningful barriers that keep consumers from buying eco-labeled food products. In addition, it seems not to be clear, whether consumers perceive eco-labeled food products to be beneficial for the environment or not.

A huge variety of eco-labels exist in Switzerland. This work tries to elicit consumers’ perception of Swiss ecolabels. The data was collected through a total of nine qualitative interviews, conducted with participants from the author’s social environment. First, it is evaluated, how consumers perceive Swiss eco-labels. This thesis assumes that there are differences between the consumers’ perception and he real characteristics behind the labels. Therefore, seven eco-labels are selected for further investigation. It includes the labels Bio Knospe, Migros Bio, Max Havelaar, By-Air, IP-Suisse, Heidi, and Climatop. Second, the purchasing behaviour of the participants is examined. It is assumed that the reasons for or against the purchase of an eco-labeled food product do not differ from the reasons suggested by literature. Furthermore, the participants’ attitude towards the environmental friendliness of eco-labeled food products is investigated. Third, it is examined how respondents judged Swiss ecolabels in general. Therefore, the introduction of either a national label implemented by the Swiss government or an eco-label based on a traffic light system is discussed. Finally, the respondents are asked to judge the information on eco-labels.

Consumers were in general aware of the huge variety of existing eco-labels, but the level of knowledge varied a lot between the participants. The respondents were familiar with organic and fair-trade labels but not with ecolabels addressing CO₂-compensation. The respondents were capable of figuring out the main focuses of a label but had troubles to distinguish between similar labels. Differences were observed between the participants’ perception and the real characteristics behind a label. The participants stated on average that they bought ecolabeled food products now and then. The results regarding the reasons that influenced the respondents go in line with the literature’s findings. In general, the respondents judged the purchase of a single eco-labeled food product to be marginally beneficial for the environment. But it would only have a significant positive impact on the environment, if many people buy such products.

The implementation of a national label was appreciated by most of the respondents. They would welcome a uniform eco-label and expected it to be more transparent and trustworthy. The opinion about an eco-label based on a traffic light system rather diverged. Some respondents welcomed such a label, while others criticized it. Finally, the respondents indicated that they were not sufficiently informed about eco-labels. Many interviewees stated that one could find enough information, if they searched on the Internet. But the respondents stated that they did not have enough time or interest to carry out their own inquiries. Nevertheless, some wished to have additional information to better distinguish between different labels. Several ideas were proposed that could increase consumers’ level of knowledge. It includes brochures, information boards, or a bar code, which would be directly provided at the store, where eco-labeled food products are sold.

To conclude, it can be said that the opinions regarding eco-labels diverge a lot. There is no single solution to improve the situation of Swiss eco-labels, which satisfies everyone. There is still potential for further investigation, which could help to ameliorate the actual situation.

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Vandea Elena (2014). Der Einfluss vom Lebensereignis Heirat auf Essverhalten, Lebensmittelwahl und körperliche Aktivität.

Die Heirat ist ein Lebensereignis, das trotz einer sich ändernden Einstellung zur Ehe immer noch weit verbreitet ist und oft als Beginn für ein gemeinsames Leben mit dem Partner gesehen wird. Eine Eheschliessung bringt viele Veränderungen mit sich. Mit dem Partner zusammenziehen oder gemeinsame Kinder zu bekommen kann das Leben eines Paares komplett verändern: So trägt man nun die Verantwortung für die ganze Familie, und ist mit neuen Rollen, wie der des Ehepartners und Elternteils, konfrontiert. Unter diese Veränderungen fallen auch einige, die mit dem Essverhalten und der körperlichen Aktivität, aber auch mit dem Gewicht zu tun haben.

Ziel dieser Literaturarbeit ist, Studien über diese Themen vorzustellen und deren Ergebnisse zusammenzufassen, um möglichst ein Überblick der drei genannten Themenbereiche in Bezug auf das Lebensereignis Heirat zu ermöglichen. Zuvor werden aber in diesen Kapitel sowohl das Essverhalten, die körperliche Aktivität, die Gewichtsentwicklung als auch das Lebensereignis Heirat vorgestellt.

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Knill Ysabelle (2014). Synergistische Gesundheitsrisiken. Untersuchung des Dosierungsverhaltens anhand von Medikamenten

Mehrere Aspekte von synergistischen Risiken wurden bereits untersucht: Deren Wahrnehmung, Verständnis, Beurteilung, Skalen zur Einschätzung usw. Bis jetzt gibt es noch keine Studie, welche die Verhaltenskonsequenzen eines mangelnden Verständnisses von synergistischen Gesundheitsrisiken untersucht hat. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit Synergismus als Wechselwirkungsmechanismus bei der Einnahme bzw. Dosierung zweier Medikamente. Das synergistische Risiko beschreibt in diesem Sinn, die gegenseitige Verstärkung der Nebenwirkungen der Medikamente. Die Arbeit basiert auf Studien, welche aufgezeigt haben, dass Individuen Schwierigkeiten haben, synergistische Risiken als solche wahrzunehmen, sie zu verstehen und als plausibel zu betrachten. In dieser experimentellen Studie wird das Verhalten von 120 Teilnehmenden untersucht. Sie werden über synergistische Gesundheitsrisiken informiert und müssen anschliessend Medikamente dosieren. Dabei handelt es sich nicht um echte Medikamente, sondern lediglich um mit Lebensmittelfarbe gefärbtes Wasser. Diese Studie ist auf einem einfaktoriellen Design mit drei Stufen und drei unabhängigen Stichproben aufgebaut. Die drei Stufen bzw. Bedingungen unterscheiden sich in ihrem Gehalt an Informationen über synergistische Gesundheitsrisiken. Als abhängige Variable wird die Dosierungsmenge gemessen. Die Auswertung besteht mehrheitlich aus einfaktoriellen Varianzanalysen. Die erhobenen Resultate unterstützen die Behauptung von Dawson et al. (2012a), dass Menschen Situation mit überadditive synergistische Risiken nicht wesentlich von solchen mit additiven Risiken unterscheiden. Die Medikamentendosierungen fallen ähnlich aus, unabhängig davon, wie hoch das beschriebene synergistische Risiko ist. Zudem wurde eine Diskrepanz zwischen der Risikowahrnehmung und dem Verhalten gegenüber dem Risiko gefunden. Die stark synergistische Bedingung wurde als risikoreicher empfunden und erzeugte mehr Angstgefühle. Der Grossteil der Teilnehmenden haben ihr Verhalten jedoch weder signifikant im vorbeugenden Sinne angepasst, weniger Medikamente dosiert oder die Dosierung vollständig ausgelassen. Die Resultate sind für die Gesundheitsprävention wichtig. Die Ergebnisse können dazu verwendet werden, Informationen über Medikamente und deren kombiniertes Risiko zu verbessern. Ebenso können angepasste Gesundheitsentscheidungen bei Patienten bzw. Medikamentenkonsumenten gefördert werden.

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Peric Marina (2014). The Influence of Food Temperature on Expected Satiety and Portion Size: An Online Experiment

In the present study, the effect of food temperature on ratings of expected satiety and decisions on portion size was investigated. By use of an online questionnaire it was determined how satiating a pasta meal composed of fake penne pasta, bell pepper slices, tomato wedges and green peas was expected to be. Of the 338 subjects, each was randomly assigned to one of two different groups. In one group (n = 168) the presented pasta meal was labeled as “Cold pasta meal” and in the other group (n = 170) it was labeled as “Warm pasta meal”, which was the only difference between the two groups.

Furthermore, subjects were asked to choose one out of 10 portions they would eat for lunch if no side dishes or dessert were available. The portions differed in their amount on a linear scale ranging from 696.3 kJ (portion 1) to 3418.6 kJ (portion 10). Additional measurements of the pasta meal’s estimated caloric content, subjects’ hunger levels, likeability of the pasta meal, restrained eating behavior, attitudes towards warm and cold meals, frequency of warm meal consumption and socio-demographic data were taken.

The results indicate that the pasta meal temperature had no significant influence on the expected satiety levels (F_{(1, 153)} = 0.001, p = .972, ηP² = .000), the estimated caloric content (F_{(1, 153)} = 0.030, p = .864, ηP² = .000) and portion size choice (F_{(1, 153)} = 0.032, p = .859, ηP² = .000). The missing relationship can partly be attributed to the fact that the pasta meal looked rather cold to a large number of subjects even when it was labeled as warm. However, ratings of subjects who had made the correct temperature attribution still showed no significant mean differences between the warm and cold pasta meal.

It can therefore be assumed that solely varying the temperature label from warm to cold was not sufficient to increase the difference in the expectations of this pasta meal’s satiating capacity and caloric content and to make a significant difference in portion size choice. However, the effects of increasing food temperature may differ in other meals with differing sensory qualities as well as in other types of study design. Further studies with other types of foods are necessary to provide more insight on whether food temperature can be a suitable variable for influencing consumers’ dietary patterns towards a more balanced diet without affecting consumers’ freedom of choice.

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Lam Juwela (2013). Welche Kriterien braucht es bei einer Hauptmahlzeit?

Was sind aus Konsumentensicht die wichtigsten Kriterien für eine Hauptmahlzeit und gibt es dabei Unterschiede zwischen den Geschlechtern und zwischen den Alters- und Ausbildungsgruppen?

Eine Studie mit insgesamt 103 Teilnehmern zeigte, dass eine Hauptmahlzeit für den Konsumenten unbedingt frische Zutaten braucht und aus einer Stärke-, einer Gemüseund einer Fleischkomponente bestehen muss. Ausserdem waren Kriterien wie die Temperatur, die Portionengrösse und die Gesundheitsaspekte für eine Hauptmahlzeit ebenfalls von grosser Bedeutung.

Generell kann mit dieser Studie bestätigt werden, dass eine Hauptmahlzeit aus Konsumentensicht warm, gesund und genug gross sein muss, während es sich bei einer Zwischenmahlzeit eher um kalte, ungesunde (das heisst fettig und süss) und kleine Portionen handelt.

Weiterhin konnte auch gezeigt werden, dass es zwischen den Geschlechtern deutliche Unterschiede bezüglich des Gesundheitsbewusstseins gab. Das weibliche Geschlecht legte mehr Wert auf eine gesündere Ernährung und somit auf eine Mahlzeit mit viel Gemüse, Salat und frischen Zutaten. Zwischen den Altersgruppen gab es ebenfalls Unterschiede bezüglich des Gesundheitsbewusstseins und des Essverhaltens. Ältere Personen bereiten ihre Hauptmahlzeiten lieber selber zu und beginnen ihre Mahlzeit gerne mit einer Vorspeise beziehungsweise mit einer Suppe, weil sie sich mehr Zeit dazu nehmen können als die jüngeren Arbeitnehmer zwischen 18 und 45 Jahren. Sie gaben an, dass sie generell kleinere Portionen als die jüngeren Personen essen. Durch das ausgeprägte Gesundheitsbewusstsein greifen die Älteren auch häufiger zu Gemüse und Salat.

Auch zwischen den Ausbildungskategorien waren Unterschiede vorhanden. Die Personen mit einem höheren Ausbildungsabschluss legten eher weniger Wert auf den Fleischund Stärkekonsum als diejenigen mit einem niedrigen Ausbildungsabschluss. Weiterhin war es für Personen mit einem niedrigeren Abschluss wichtiger, eine warme Hauptmahlzeit zu essen.

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Waltensperger Donato (2013). Guide zur korrekten Erstellung eines leitfadengestützten qualitativen Interviews

In dieser Arbeit wird eine Hilfestellung zur Bildung eines leitfadengestützten Interviews entwickelt. Die Idee für diese Arbeit ist daraus entstanden, dass in den Naturwissenschaften neben der üblichen quantitativen Erhebungsmethoden immer mehr qualitative Forschungen gemacht werden. Deren Erhebungsmethoden, zu denen das Leitfadeninterview gehört, werden jedoch oft falsch oder zu ungenau verwendet. Um diesem entgegenzuwirken wurde, gestützt auf theoretischen Grundlagen zur Sozialforschung im Allgemeinen und zum qualitativen Interview im Speziellen, eine Hilfestellung für die Generierung eines Leitfadeninterviews erarbeitet. Diese Grundlagen wurden mit Hilfe einer spezifischen Literaturrecherche, welche auf einem Top-down-Ansatz beruht, herauskristallisiert. Dadurch wurden drei zentrale Werke herausgefiltert, die dieser Hilfestellung als Grundstein dienten. Anschliessend wurde anhand der Hilfestellung ein Leitfaden für das Thema "Carbon Capture and Storage" generiert und im Anschluss in zwei Befragungen getestet. Die Analyse dieses Tests zeigen Stärken und Schwächen des Leitfadens und Probleme bei der Durchführung. Zusätzlich wurde eine Broschüre erstellt, welche die wesentlichen Punkte für die Erstellung eines Leitfadens und dessen Durchführung erklärt.

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Garcia Gabriel Ariadna (2013). NUDGES Welche Faktoren beeinflussen die Akzeptanz von Nudges?

In den letzten Jahren hat die Forschung gezeigt, dass zahlreiche Faktoren wie Portionengrösse, Tellergrösse oder der Aufwand, der betrieben werden muss, um sich Essen zu beschaffen, einen Einfluss auf die konsumierte Menge haben. Somit spielt die Essensumgebung eine wichtige Rolle bei der Ernährung und hat einen wesentlichen Einfluss darauf, wie viel gegessen wird. Mittels Nudges könnte die Umgebung so gestaltet werden, dass klügere Entscheidungen bezüglich dem Essverhalten getroffen werden.

Nudging Interventionen stellen daher einerseits eine Chance dar, um das Gesundheitsverhalten der Bevölkerung gezielt zu verbessern. Andererseits können Nudges auch als Eingriff in die Entscheidungsfreiheit betrachtet werden.Bisher ist nicht bekannt, wie die Schweizer Bevölkerung auf Nudging Massnahmen reagieren wird. In dieser Arbeit soll deshalb erforscht werden, von welchen Faktoren die Akzeptanz solcher Nudges abhängt und wie diese Faktoren untereinander zusammenhängen.

Die Resultate dieser Studien zeigen auf, dass die Akzeptanz von Nudges durch die Prädiktorvariablen Akzeptanz von Paternalismus, Akzeptanz von Staatseingriffen sowie mit der Zufriedenheit mit dem eigenen Körpergewicht erklärt werden kann. Je mehr gesetzliche Regulierungen oder harte Massnahmen akzeptiert werden, desto mehr werden auch kleinere Interventionen wie Nudges akzeptiert. Zudem ist die Akzeptanz auch erhöht, wenn Personen mit ihrem eigenen Körpergewicht unzufrieden sind. Vermutlich sehen diese Individuen in den Nudging Massnahmen eine Möglichkeit ihr Ernährungsverhalten in eine gesündere Richtung zu lenken. Die gesündere Ernährung könnte in einem besseren Körpergewicht resultieren und zu einer Steigerung der Zufriedenheit mit dem eigenen Körpergewicht führen.

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Maurer Viviane (2013). Food choice based on energy expenditure estimations of physical activity

Various studies have shown that people cannot well estimate calories in different types of food. Especially calories of foods with high energy contents are often underestimated (Wansink & Chandon, 2006b). However, consumers tend to have an intuitive understanding of how much food they need. Prior research found that the energy served in a normal meal of a person correlates with the calculated personal energy requirement (Bucher, van der Horst, & Siegrist, 2012).

Indeed, it is unknown whether this sense of energy requirement also exists with physical activities. The goal of the present study was to find out if people are able to estimate the amount of food they expend in a certain exercise (forty-five minutes of jogging). A total of 119 people were asked to serve themselves the corresponding amount of fries or pasta. It was also investigated whether participants who exercise at least three times a week endurance sports have a better understanding of the expended calories during the exercise than participants who exercise less or not at all. Finally, the differences between the amounts of energy served with the food and the calculated energy needs were compared.

The results showed that in general consumers are not able to estimate expended calories during exercises correctly. Additionally, they also cannot serve themselves the right amount of food to cover these calories, independently of the energy density of the food. It also plays no role how much a person exercises. The only significant difference was found with male and female participants. The results showed that women can better estimate the expended energy during exercises than men.

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Stokvis Schlomo (2013). Gruppenhaltung von Zuchthäsinnen – Eine qualitative ex-post Analyse der Einschätzung von ehemaligen Züchtern aus dem Emmental

In dieser Arbeit wird die Gruppenhaltung von weiblichen Kaninchen anhand einer ex-post Analyse untersucht. Es werden die in der Schweiz geltenden gesetzlichen Rahmenbedingungen für Gruppenhaltung von Kaninchen sowie Richtlinien von nicht staatlichen Organisationen zur Haltung beschrieben und der Wissensstand der Forschung zur Kaninchenhaltung recherchiert. Verschiedene Züchter wurden zum Thema Kaninchenhaltung befragt. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Züchter, die in den neunziger Jahren bei einem Projekt im Emmental mitmachten, das zum Ziel hatte, Kaninchen in Zucht- und Mastgruppen zu halten, als mögliche Alternative zur kritisierten Einzelhaltung. Das angewandte Gruppenhaltungssystem funktionierte grundsätzlich gut. Die Arbeit zeigt auf, dass Aggressionen in Zuchtgruppenhaltung für die befragten Züchter entgegen allgemeiner Annahme unbedeutend waren. Die befragten Züchter beendeten die Kaninchenzucht in Gruppen Mitte der 90er Jahre, einhergehend mit der Auflösung der Vereinigung, in der die Emmentaler Züchter organisiert waren. Als Gründe dafür konnten hauptsächlich Zeitmangel, ungenügende Rentabilität und Kaninchenkrankheiten eruiert werden.

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Buff Jean-Sébastien (2013). Discovering the German terms for food-associated emotions

Linking food with emotions is a relative new field which is constantly changing and advancing. While there are several questionnaires investigating that fact, in particular the EsSense Profile® by King and Meiselmann, there were no lists in the German language. Findings by various authors concerning the cultural implications of languages justified the need for a standard questionnaire in German. The present list was created using a consumer‐centric survey. After establishing an initial pool of words, using novel methods such as online‐based text corpora and statistical analysis, an initial list of 272 German emotion words was compiled and submitted to respondents who were asked whether the words would appropriately describe a potential emotion in connection with food. The 50 highest rated words by approval frequency were then compared with known other emotion lists, among them the EsSense Profile®, the GEOS (Geneva Emotion and Odor Scale) and the BEOS (Beijing Emotion and Odor Scale). Furthermore gender, age and education effects were investigated. The results confirmed established effects such as hedonic asymmetry and cultural influence. Possible uses of this method as well as limitations are iscussed in this thesis.

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Nyffenegger David (2013). Der grüne Automobilist

Durch seinen hohen Anteil am Gesamtenergiebedarf und die damit verbundenen Schadstoff- und Klimagasemissionen ist der Automobilkonsum immer wieder Ziel umweltpolitischer Lenkungsmassnahmen. Zu deren Entwicklung ist es von Vorteil, wenn man ein genaues Bild vom Verursacher, dem Automobilisten, hat. Auch die Automobilbranche hat ein Interesse an einem besseren Verständnis ihrer Kunden. Diese Arbeit liefert eine derartige tiefergehende Beschreibung der verschiedenen Automobilkonsumentengruppen. Es soll dabei insbesondere ermittelt werden, ob sich grüne Automobilisten in der Art des gezeigten energie- / umweltfreundlichen Verhaltens und der zugrunde liegenden Motive unterscheiden oder ob es sich dabei um eine homogene Gruppe handelt. Mittels verhaltensbasierter Segmentierungsvariablen, dazu gehören beispielsweise Mindernutzung, Technikverwendung und verhaltenspsychologische Variablen, werden Automobilisten in verschiedene Gruppen aufgeteilt. Da sich gezeigt hat, dass auch die Symbolik im Zusammenhang mit dem Automobil von hoher Verhaltensrelevanz ist, wird auch dieser Aspekt in die Segmentierung einbezogen.

Es wurde eine Online-Studie durchgeführt, zu der nebst dem Umfeld des Autors hauptsächlich Mitglieder des Internetpanels der Gruppe Consumer Behavior des Instituts für Umweltentscheidungen (ETH Zürich) eingeladen wurden. Von den eingeladenen Mitgliedern füllten 384 den Fragebogen vollständig aus. Im Fragebogen wurden unterschiedliche autobezogene Verhaltensweisen und damit verbundene verhaltenspsychologische Variablen erhoben. Sie bildeten die Segmentierungsbasis zur Identifizierung verschiedener Automobilistengruppen. Die Clusteranalyse brachte fünf Gruppen von Automobilkonsumenten hervor: die progressiv symbolischen Grünen, welche grossen Wert auf das Vermitteln ihrer Persönlichkeitseigenschaften, namentlich Umweltbewusstsein und Fortschrittlichkeit, mittels Auto legen; die symbolikaversiven Grünen, die dieser Aussenwirkung nichts abgewinnen können und finanziell etwas schlechter aufgestellt sind; die sehr kostenbewussten Preis-Nutzen-Orientierten, deren umweltfreundliche Bestrebungen auf finanzieller Motivation beruhen; die sich der Umweltproblematik durch das Auto bewussten problembewussten Komfortorientierten, die jedoch ihren persönlichen Komfort vor Umweltbedenken stellen; und die statuseigenschaftenorientierten Traditionalisten, welche sich den durch die Automobilbranche traditionellerweise beworbenen Statuseigenschaften wie Luxuriösität, Sportlichkeit und Leistung verschrieben haben.

Im Hinblick auf die Fragestellung nach einem Segment grüner Automobilisten und dessen Homogenität, zeigte die Segmentierung, dass die Symbolik zur Unterscheidung in zwei Gruppen grüner Automobilkonsumenten entscheidend beiträgt. Man kann somit nicht von einem homogenen Segment sprechen. Die Symbolik spielte wider Erwarten gar eine grössere Rolle als die Unterscheidung von Mindernutzungsverhalten und Technikverwendung.

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Gordon Naomi (2012). CO₂ Bilanz von Studierenden der ETH Zürich und Evaluation einer Umweltkampagne

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde in einem ersten Teil mittels eines Fragebogens und eines selbsterstellten CO₂-Rechners die CO₂ Bilanz und das Umweltverhalten von ETH Studenten bestimmt. Die Studenten wurden anhand der Nähe ihres Studiengangs zur Umweltproblematik in sechs Studiengruppen eingeteilt. Anhand von statistischen Tests wurden Unterschiede in der CO₂ Bilanz und im Verhalten zwischen verschiedenen Studiengruppen, männlichen und weiblichen Studenten und Bachelor und Master Studenten gesucht. Unter anderem interessierte, ob Studiengänge, die nahe der Umweltproblematik sind, eine kleinere CO₂ Bilanz und umweltfreundlicheres Verhalten aufzeigen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass Studenten von Studiengängen nahe der Umweltproblematik in den meisten Fällen eine tiefere CO₂ Bilanz aufweisen als Studenten anderer Studiengruppen.

Der zweite Teil dieser Arbeit evaluiert eine Kampagne der Studentenvereinigung weACT. Die dreiwöchige Kampagne sollte die Teilnehmer auf umweltfreundliches Verhalten sensibilisieren. Die Teilnehmer, bei denen es sich um Studenten oder Mitarbeitern der ETH und Universität Zürich handelte, bildeten für die Kampagne Gruppen mit drei bis fünf Mitgliedern. Anhand eines Fragebogens vor der Kampagne und einem nach der Kampagne konnte die Änderung der CO₂ Bilanz und des Umweltverhaltens gemessen werden. Mit statistischen Tests konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Kampagne in einigen Bereichen zu einer Verbesserung der CO₂ Bilanz und des Umweltverhaltens geführt hat. In dieser Arbeit wurde nur der kurzfristige Effekt der Kampagne gemessen, jedoch wäre sicherlich auch interessant den langfristigen Effekt zu untersuchen.

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Huwyler Deborah (2012). Influences of selected aspects on food choice

Since the average body shape of people in western countries has changed enormously it is necessary to comprehend the environmental factors which influence our eating behaviour (Wansink 2010). Therefore, the goal of the present study was to identify the influences of selected aspects on food choice. Of the 128 participants visiting one of four cafeterias at the ETH Zurich each were randomly assigned to one of the conditions of hungry or satiated. They were asked to select one of eight menus (bratwurst, fries and carrots) for tomorrow’s lunch. The options only differed in the amount of fries and carrots. Thereafter, the person filled out a questionnaire.

The results showed that hungriness had no significant influence on the calorie density of the menu. On the other hand, it could be revealed that the likability of the food components played a major role in menu choice especially before lunch. The restrained eating behaviour as well as the gender of the participants also had a noteworthy impact. The results showed that food choice is a highly complex process and many factors are crucial for the menu selection.

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Huber Fabian (2012). Is food labeling a synonym of natural?

This research investigated the influence of weight-related external cues on food intake. The first study used a photograph showing three of the famous skinny human-like sculptures by Giacometti and a photograph of a Nana by Niki de Saint Phalle. In Study 1 the participants showed marginally different food intake behavior for the same primes. Depending if the participants mentioned a weight-related cue or not, the prime seemed to evoke a different reaction. The two different primes also created different behavior within the people mentioning a weight-related word or not. In Study 2 the amount of participants used was increased and the setting changed. The findings of the first study could not be replicated. The Nana prime seemed to have different effects on food intake in comparison to the control. The BMI was used to predict the different reactions to the prime. High BMI participants ate less and low BMI participants ate more when being primed with the photograph of Nana than participants in the control group. The same cue, in our case a photograph of a Nana, can lead to opposite reactions.

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Breitenmoser Lena and Stalder Michelle (2011). Untersuchung von Klimawissen, Umweltbewusstsein, Verhaltensintentionen und Umweltgewohnheiten am Beispiel von ETH-Studierenden verschiedener Studienrichtungen

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, anhand der Daten von N = 1225 ETH-Studierenden, die Kausalkette Klimawissen, Klimabewusstsein, Verhaltensintentionen und Umweltgewohnheiten auf deren Zusammenhänge zu prüfen. Bezüglich der Ausprägung dieser vier genannten Elemente interessierte des Weiteren der Vergleich der ETH-Studierenden verschiedener Studienrichtungen.

Dazu wurden die ETH-Studierenden, anhand der Nähe ihres Studiengangs zur Umweltproblematik, in drei Studiengangklassen eingeteilt. Es konnte festgestellt werden, dass ETH-Studierende, welche nahe der Umweltproblematik studieren, in allen Bereichen signifikant verschiedene Mittelwerte erzielten als Studierende weit weg der Umweltproblematik. Studierende nahe der Umweltproblematik wissen mehr bezüglich des Klimawandels, sind umweltbewusster, zeigen mehr Bereitschaft zu umweltfreundlichem Verhalten und schneiden in ihren Umweltgewohnheiten besser ab.

Es wurde ersichtlich, dass ETH-Studierende sehr stark der Meinung sind, dass zugunsten des Klimas alle den Lebensstandard einschränken müssen. Daher weisen sie eine hohe Bereitschaft für ein klimafreundliches Verhalten auf, welches mit persönlichen Einschränkungen in den Lebensstandard einhergeht (Bsp. in den Ferien auf Flugreisen verzichten, weniger Fleisch essen). ETH-Studierende sind generell bereit zu umweltfreundlichem Verhalten, solange damit keine finanzielle Unterstützung zum Klimaschutz erforderlich ist. Betrachtet man die relevanten Umweltgewohnheiten der Studierenden, zeigt sich auch bei ihnen eine Diskrepanz zwischen Umweltbewusstsein und Umweltgewohnheiten. In den durchgeführten statistischen Tests konnten zwar moderate Korrelationen zwischen den Kausalkettenelementen festgestellt werden, dennoch müssen diese vorsichtig betrachtet werden. Die Kausalkette Klimawissen, Klimabewusstsein, Verhaltensintentionen und Umweltgewohnheiten scheint folglich nicht aus monokausalen Zusammenhängen zu bestehen.

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Garcia Hidalgo Elena (2011). Is food labeling a synonym of natural?

Consumers are daily confronted with a multitude of food labels. A positive (or negative), overall impression of these labels could lead to a subjective assumption of another positive (or negative) characteristic even when it is not substantively related, and this is the phenomena called Halo effect. This study concerns three labels: the organic food (bio) label, the Max Havelaar-¬fair trade label and the GDA on the front of packaging. Using the method of the between design in an online survey, I tested the presence of halo effects concerning the estimation of the calories content, of the respect of workers’ social rights, of the quality of taste and of the naturalness of the products. The questions are: (1) Do these labels cause these halo effects?, (2) Which Halo effects appear for each label, and which do not appear?

The organic food label presents an overestimation of the respect of the workers’ social rights, and all three labels cause an overestimation of the naturalness of the product. Consumers seem to know that the calorie content is not related to these labels: the same is true for the quality of taste.

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Nadler Sandra (2011). Konsumeinschränkung bei Schokolade mittels Aufwand und Feedback

In dieser Arbeit wurde die Beeinflussung von Aufwand und Feedback auf die Konsummenge von Schokolade untersucht. Anhand eines Schokoladen-Degustations-Experimentes mit 60 Frauen wurde unter 3 verschiedenen Bedingungen getestet, welche Beeinflussungs-Art den Konsum mehr prägte. Dabei stellte sich heraus, dass unter der Feedback-Bedingung, in Form von leeren Schokoladen-Papierchen, signifikant weniger konsumiert wurde als unter der Bedingung mit den ausgepackten Schokolade-Dragées. Zwischen der Aufwand-Bedingung − in Form eines kleinen Abfalleimers − und der Feedback-Bedingung gab es keinen wesentlichen Unterschied bezüglich der konsumierten Menge. Daraus lässt sich ableiten, dass der Aufwand und das Feedback fast gleich stark den Konsum von Schokolade-Dragées hemmten.

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Ortiz-Pinchetti Vargas Veronica (2011). Consumers' reasons and attitudese towards vitamins and mineral supplements consumption in Switzerland

Vitamin and mineral supplement (VMS) use is increasing worldwide, with a global market that is expected to grow in Europe at an annual rate of 5% by 2015. For Switzerland in particular, data on VMS prevalence is scarce; to date, there is no socio-demographic profile of the Swiss consumer, and the motivations behind its acceptance or rejection are unknown. Thus, the main goal of this study was to determine the most important determinants and socio-demographic covariates that explain VMS acceptance vs. rejection. Our research apparatus consisted of a mail survey sent to 2,000 randomly selected households in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The survey was completed by 307 persons (15% response rate) with a mean age of 54 years; 51% of the respondents were women. VMS prevalence was 55%, with women being the majority (63%) of VMS users. The most popular VMS were magnesium, multivitamins, and calcium (56%, 51%, and 22%, respectively). Reasons for using VMS grouped around four main clusters: well-being and vitality promotion 25%, therapeutic/treatment 19%, dietary reasons 19%, and prophylactic strategy 17%. Similarly, four clusters explained 82% of the drivers claimed by non-users to reject VMS: healthy diet and dietary sufficiency 36%, scepticism/superfluous 24%, natural affinity 12%, and ‘I am healthy’ 10%. Finally, logistic regression analysis identified five significant (p<0.05) predictors of VMS acceptance/rejection, with the model accounting for 34% of the variance. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals from the predictors indicate that: 1) women are almost three times more likely to use VMS than men (OR= 2.92, [1.48, 5.79]); 2) the better the perceived health status, the less likely the VMS use (OR= 0.53, [0.34,0.84]); 3) people who believe that VMS improve health and vitality are more likely to consume VMS (OR= 1.74, [1.20, 2.53]); 4) people who believe that VMS carry unforeseen risks are more likely to reject VMS (OR= 0.68, [0.53, 0.87]); and 5) as people get older there is a higher probability of VMS consumption (OR= 1.03 per year, [1.00, 1.05]). 

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Sutter Anja (2010). Lebensmittel: Wie beurteilen Studenten deren Umwelteinfluss?

Die Ernährung und damit die Lebensmittelproduktion hat in unserer Gesellschaft einen wichtigen Umwelteinfluss. Deshalb ist es wichtig, dass die Bevölkerung auf ihren Lebensmittelkonsum achtet. Um feststellen zu können, wie hoch der Informationsbedarf über die Umweltverträglichkeit bei Studenten ist, wurde ein Internetexperiment durchgeführt, in welchem die Versuchspersonen unterschiedliche Gemüse- und Fleischprodukte nach ihrer Umweltverträglichkeit beurteilen mussten. Dabei standen verschiedenen Versuchspersonengruppen unterschiedliche Produktinformationen (wie zum Beispiel die Herkunft oder die Produktionsart) zur Verfügung. Es konnte beobachtet werden, dass die Gruppen, welche über die Herkunft bzw. das Transportmittel der Produkte informiert wurden, diejenigen Produkte bevorzugten, welche aus der näheren Umgebung stammen, bzw. mit dem Lastwagen anstatt dem Flugzeug transportiert wurden. Die Gruppe Produktion hingegen zog die Gemüse- den Fleischprodukten vor, während die Reihenfolge innerhalb des Gemüses der Umweltfreundlichkeit der Produktionsweise entsprach. In der Gruppe Konservierung und Verpackung konnte kein Trend festgestellt werden.

Die Resultate liessen folgende Schlüsse zu: Studenten wissen, dass Fleischproduktion umweltschädlich ist. Allerdings sind die Kriterien Herkunft und Transport für die Versuchspersonen wichtiger: Fleischprodukte rutschen in der Rangfolge vor einige Gemüseprodukte, wenn ihr Herkunftsland näher oder das Transportmittel weniger umweltschädlich als dasjenige eines Gemüseproduktes ist. Die Produktion spielt hingegen – zu Recht – eine geringere Rolle: Auch biologisch produzierter Fisch wird als umweltschädlicher bewertet als der im Gewächshaus gezogene Salat. Somit liegt der Informationsbedarf der Studenten insbesondere darin, aufzuzeigen, dass die Fleischproduktion schwerer wiegt als eine weite Reise mit dem Flugzeug.

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Schwarz Manuela (2010). Communication and laypeople's perception of nuclear power

Two major problems of our time are the use of energy and with it the production of energy. This pilot-study focuses on the attitudes of students towards a source of energy production – nuclear energy – considering its advantages and disadvantages. For instance, an important disadvantage of nuclear energy still relates to nuclear waste. On the other side, nuclear energy is the only major source that does not produce greenhouse gases and therefore does not contribute to climate change. Additionally, there is wide experience showing that nuclear reactors have a very low risk of accidents, making nuclear energy a very safe technology (Siegrist, Cvetkovich, & Roth, 2000).

Knowledge about laypeople’s attitudes towards a technology is important for authorities for communication (Siegrist, et al., 2000). This pilot-study explores changes in the attitude towards nuclear power when laypeople read a neutral text about nuclear power with expert opinions, thereby varying the similarity of expert values with their own values. It is expected that laypeople, which have a lack of knowledge, will have more trust in the expert if this expert has similar values as oneself.

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Wetzel Lea (2010). Implicit and explicit determinants of ready meal consumption

Convenience food is omnipresent in our world and its demand is steadily increasing. In Europe it is a relatively new consumer trend. Thus, it is important to have a founded knowledge of the determinants of ready meal consumption. Implicit and explicit ones were examined. This bachelor thesis involves a free-association task, followed by a SC-IAT and completed with a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. The data collection took place in the part of Germanspeaking Switzerland, mainly in big cities. 39 participants responsible for buying and preparing food in their households were seen at their home and completed the three exercises. Out of the selected six ready meals, soup in a bag is the most consumed ready meal, followed by pizza ready-made. Furthermore, moderate positive free associations with ready meals were found. The final value of the ready meal SC-IAT (D-scores) indicates slightly more positive than negative implicit attitudes with ready meals. Out of the questionnaire, participants have averaged explicit attitudes concerning ready meals. Correlation and regression analysis were carried out. Unexpectedly, free associations correlate better with explicit in contrast to implicit attitudes. Consumption of instant pasta dish and pizza ready-made turns out to correlate significantly with implicit attitudes. On the contrary, consumption of pizza ready-made, the average consumption of all ready meals (entire consumption), and the consumption of ready meals for dinner correlate significantly with explicit attitudes. Examining the regression analysis, explicit attitudes predict significantly the consumption of pizza ready-made, ravioli in a can, consumption for dinner, and the entire consumption. However, implicit attitudes predict significantly the consumption of instant pasta dish and pizza ready-made. These results suggest that the consumption of ready meals cannot be predicted only by explicit determinants. Implicit determinants have to be included too. These findings contribute to a better understanding of ready meal consumption. In the future, food marketers should be aware of the importance of implicit and as well as explicit determinants.

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Lipscher Valerie (2010). Reziprozität im Konsumentenverhalten: Eine Betrachtung der Tür-ins-Gesicht-Taktik

Jeder Mensch hat sich schon mal in der Situation befunden, in der er ein Produkt gekauft hat, welches er weder nötig hatte noch kaufen wollte. Oder er ist einer Bitte nachgekommen, obwohl er nachträglich nicht mehr wirklich nachvollziehen konnte, wieso er dies tat. Cialdini (2007) erklärt uns in "Die Psychologie des Überzeugens", warum wir in unserem Leben immer wieder solche Entscheide treffen. Grund dafür sind Überzeugungsstrategien, die von Verkäufern oder Freunden bewusst oder unbewusst eingesetzt werden und auf verschiedenen Prinzipien beruhen. Zu diesen gehören nicht nur die Reziprozität sondern auch die Konsistenz, die soziale Bewährtheit, die Sympathie, die Autorität oder das Knappheitsprinzip. Grundsätzlich lässt sich sagen, dass jedes dieser psychologischen Prinzipien in einer Überzeugungsstrategie angewendet werden kann, um die Chance einer Zustimmung zu erhöhen. Die Forderungen können gemeinnützigen Ursprungs sein und zum Beispiel eine Spende oder einen Gefallen für einen Freund beinhalten. Häufig findet man auch im kommerziellen Bereich Anwendungen der Überredungsstrategien. Sie können das Konsumentenverhalten massgeblich beeinflussen. Eine solche Überzeugungsstrategie ist beispielsweise die Tür-ins-Gesicht-Taktik, die von Cialdini et al. (1975) erstmals beschrieben und anhand des Reziprozitätsprinzip erklärt wurde. Die Taktik setzt sich aus einer ersten übertrieben grossen Forderung, die von der Zielperson verworfen wird und einer darauffolgenden kleineren Zielforderung zusammen. Das Verkleinern der Forderung wird von der Zielperson als Entgegenkommen wahrgenommen und wird durch die Zustimmung zur zweiten Forderung erwidert.

Diese Literaturarbeit beschreibt als erstes das Reziprozitätsprinzip und dessen Anwendung beim Beeinflussen des Konsumentenverhaltens. Die Tür-ins-Gesicht-Taktik wird als eine Anwendung Der Reziprozität genauer erörtert.

Später wurden von mehreren Autoren alternative Erklärungsmodelle vorgeschlagen. Im Folgenden werden diese Modelle genauer erläutert und miteinander verglichen. Dabei ist zu untersuchen, inwiefern sich die Erklärungsversuche gegenseitig ausschliessen. Es stellt sich ausserdem die Frage, welches der Modelle gemäss dem neusten Forschungsstand diese Verhaltensweisen am befriedigendsten begründen kann. Zum Vergleich der Erklärungsmodelle wurden verschiedene modellierende Effekte herangezogen, die in dieser Arbeit charakterisiert werden. Es zeigte sich hierbei, dass keines der vorgestellten Erklärungsmodelle als vollständig richtig angesehen werden kann.

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Kurtz Olivia (2009). Wahrnehmung von Lebensmitteln

Diese qualitative Studie befasst sich mit der Wahrnehmung von Lebensmitteln in Bezug auf Natürlichkeit und Regionalität. Die Natürlichkeit von Produkten scheint für die Konsumenten ein wichtiges Kriterium bei der Auswahl und der Beurteilung von Lebensmitteln zu sein. Die vielen Labelbeschriftungen, die auf die Natürlichkeit und die regionale Herkunft eines Produktes hinweisen, und die aktuellen Werbebotschaften lassen vermuten, dass Natürlichkeit und Regionalität wichtige Kaufargument sind und zur Differenzierung im Lebensmittelsektor dienen. Nähe, Vertrautheit, Frische und Natürlichkeit werden suggeriert. Gefühle und Sehnsüchte werden geweckt. Was assoziieren die Konsumenten mit Natürlichkeit und Regionalität? Gibt es eine Verbindung zwischen den beiden aktuellen, grossen Trends der Nahrungsmittelbranche?

Die Fragestellung wurde nach dem Mental Model Approach bearbeitet. Mittels qualitativer Interviews wurden die Vorstellungen und Wahrnehmungen der Konsumenten bezüglich Natürlichkeit und Regionalität von Lebensmitteln erfasst.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird aufgezeigt, dass die beiden Konzepte "Natürlichkeit" und "Regionalität" zusammenhängen und die Kaufentscheidungen beeinflussen. Die Wahrnehmungen und Vorstellungen der Konsumenten sind subjektiv und werden von verschiedenen Faktoren beeinflusst. Beide Kaufargumente werden mit Herkunft, Schweiz, Bauernhof, kurzen Transportwegen, Umweltfreundlichkeit, Unbelassenheit, Frische und Qualität assoziiert.

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Dohner Keila (2009). Das Label isst mit. Die Beeinflussung der hedonischen Wahrnehmung durch vorgängige Information am Beispiel der Natürlichkeit bei Schokoladenmousse

Die Hedonik spielt eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Wahl eines Produktes und kann von vorgängigen Produktinformationen über Inhaltsstoffe oder das Label beeinflusst werden. Ferner lassen die vielen "Natur-Labels" wie zum Beispiel "Bio Natur Plus" oder "naturafarm" vermuten, dass Natürlichkeit ein wichtiges Kaufargument ist. Schmeckt ein "natürliches" Lebensmittel besser? Steigert ein "Bio-Label" die subjektiv empfundene Natürlichkeit eines Lebensmittels?

Die vorliegende Studie verfolgt das Ziel, die Beeinflussung der wahrgenommenen Natürlichkeit und der hedonischen Bewertung einer handelsüblichen Schokoladenmousse durch verschiedene Produktinformationen aufzuzeigen.

Für die Erreichung des Forschungszieles wurde ein Between-subjects-Design ausgearbeitet. Dabei haben in einem quantitativen Experiment drei Gruppen von Testpersonen vor der Degustation einer immer gleichen Schokoladenmousse verschiedene Informationen (natürlicher oder künstlicher Aromastoff, Bio-Label) bekommen. Als Kontrolle diente eine vierte Gruppe ohne vorgängige Information.

Die Resultate zeigen, dass die Schokoladenmousse mit dem angeblich "natürlichen" Aromastoff den Testpersonen signifikant besser geschmeckt hat als diejenige mit dem "künstlichen" Aromastoff. Weiter deuten die Ergebnisse an, dass der "natürliche" Aromastoff sowie das "Bio-Label" die subjektiv empfundene Natürlichkeit der Testpersonen signifikant erhöht.

Aus diesem Grund lassen sich folgende Schlussfolgerungen ableiten: Das Attribut "natürlich" erzeugt Gefallen beim Konsumenten, was seine Wahl entscheidend beeinflusst. Zusätzlich ist anzunehmen, dass das "Bio-Label" Assoziationen zu Natur und Natürlichkeit hervorruft und dadurch die Beurteilung von Produkten positiv beeinflusst.

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Hakuba Maria Z. (2009). Public perception of climate change

Global climate change is widely accepted to be a severe environmental problem and there is consensus about the necessity to decrease anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Public's awareness, knowledge and way of decision making regarding climate change are fundamental for the implementation of regulations to mitigate CO₂ emissions and prevent global warming and its worldwide impacts. Public information about the processes underlying climate change and risk communication are therefore of great importance to provide a basis for appropriate decisions regarding climate change and its causes. The creation of such tools is based on the acquirement of public's prior knowledge and beliefs. Various studies exist about public's perception of climate change predominantly for the UK and the USA.

With the help of face-to-face interviews, conducted with a sample of eight Swiss citizens, laypeople's knowledge, their beliefs and emotions have been investigated. Similar to the results of comparable studies the laypeople showed little personal relevance but all in all negative emotions and they evaluated climate change, its causes and impacts to be mostly negative. Misconceptions involving the dilution of the ozone layer and the mixing up of different environmental problems pointed to a lack of correct linkage between climate change and the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that an overall awareness of CO₂ being the main precursor of the global warming was present. Anyhow the general awareness and perception of climate change was primarily given through observable severe impacts. Skepticism towards the human induced climate change via CO₂ was spoken out by the majority of the respondents yet they did not show absolute carelessness and were able to name a variety of possible counteractive measures. However the results show how urgent appropriate risk communication is to maintain more accurate knowledge and awareness of climate change, to dilute skepticism and to help generating a correct link between climate change, the greenhouse effect and anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

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Diefenbacher Pascal (2009). Das Laienverständnis von wissenschaftlicher Unsicherheit – Was weiss man darüber? Eine Zusammenstellung der aktuellen Forschungsergebnisse

Laut dem Bundesamt für Kommunikation gab es in der Schweiz im Jahr 2007 erstmals mehr Handy-Abonnements als Einwohner. Deshalb ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass die Diskussion um die möglichen Gesundheitseffekte des Mobilfunks in den letzten Jahren eine riesige Medienpräsenz erreichte. Dabei versuchten vor allem die Boulevardzeitungen Berichte von Betroffenen mit neuen wissenschaftlichen Studien zu verbinden. Dies führte zu einer hohen Betroffenheit in der Bevölkerung, was sich in der Oppositionshaltung beim Bau von Mobilfunk-Basisstationen ausdrückt.

Dies wird dadurch verschärft, dass das Wissen über wissenschaftliche Studien grösstenteils von Massenmedien vermittelt wird. In Deutschland kam eine Studie im Jahr 2001 zum Schluss, dass die Hauptinformationsmittel das Fernsehen (58%) und die Tageszeitungen (48%) sind (Schroeder, 2002).
Problematisch dabei ist, dass die Informationen von den Medien verfälscht werden könne. Nelkin stellte fest, dass die Öffentlichkeit die Wissenschaft "weniger durch direkte Erfahrung oder Bildung, als durch den Filter journalistischer Sprache und Symbolik" versteht (Nelkin, 1995).

Die allermeisten Studien kommen zum Schluss, dass das gesundheitliche Risiko des Mobilfunkes eher klein ist. Trotzdem wird manchmal die wissenschaftliche Unsicherheit in den Medien durch Betrachten von Kontroversen und Uneinigkeiten zwischen Wissenschaftlern hervorgehoben und oft übertrieben. Dem Konsumenten soll schliesslich eine dramatische Lektüre geboten werden.

In dieser Semesterarbeit wird mittels einer Literaturrecherche der derzeitige Kenntnisstand über das Laienverständnis von wissenschaftlicher Unsicherheit untersucht. In einem ersten Teil wird das Laienverständnis von Wissenschaft im weiten Sinne näher betrachtet und es werden die Kommunikationsprobleme beschrieben. Der zweite Teil betrachtet die Informationskanäle, durch die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse an Laien vermittelt werden und betrachtet kritisch die Rolle der Massenmedien. Weiter stellt sich die Frage, wie wissenschaftliche Unsicherheit vermittelt wird und ob die Informationen eventuell verfälscht werden.

Der dritte Teil behandelt das Laienverständnis von wissenschaftlicher Unsicherheit. Dabei steht die Frage, wie Laien wissenschaftliche Unsicherheit verstehen, im Vordergrund. Ebenfalls wird geklärt welche Faktoren die Wahrnehmung von Laien verfälschen können.

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Wyrsch Vera (2009). Verständlichkeitsunterschiede zwischen zwei Grafiken. Der Einfluss von Grafikstruktur und Numeracy auf das Verständnis einer Grafik

Der Mobilfunk als Quelle elektromagnetischer Strahlung ist in unserer Gesellschaft ein diskutiertes Thema, insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit möglichen Auswirkungen auf die Gesundheit. Der Umgang mit dem eigenen Mobiltelefon spielt dabei eine wichtige Rolle. Dies wird in einer Informationsbroschüre der Gruppe für Konsumentenverhalten des Instituts für Umweltentscheidungen der ETH Zürich erklärt. In dieser Semesterarbeit wurde eine Grafik aus der Broschüre zweifach erneuert. Diese beiden Grafiken geben denselben Inhalt wieder wie die ursprüngliche Grafik. Sie vergleichen die Handystrahlung während des Telefonierens in den Situationen «drinnen», «unterwegs» und «auf dem Land» mit deren Pendants «draussen», «stationär» und «in der Stadt». In den zuerst genannten Situationen strahlt ein Handy während eines Telefonats stärker als in den zuletzt genannten. Prozentzahlen geben dabei an, um wie viel die Sendeleistung von einem Zustand höherer zu einem Zustand tieferer Strahlungsbelastung reduziert werden kann. Die beiden neu entstandenen Grafiken unterscheiden sich nebst dem Inhalt auch nicht in ihren Piktogrammen und der Beschriftung der Piktrogramme, aber in ihrer Struktur. Die eine Grafik entspricht einer Tabelle, die andere Grafik beschreibt die drei Gegenüberstellungen bildhaft mit einem Satz, der gewissermaßen dreimal wiederholt gelesen wird.

Die zwei neuen Grafiken wurden mit 24 Sekundarschülerinnen und -schülern als Versuchspersonen, einem Eye-Tracker und einem Fragebogen auf Unterschiede in ihrer Verständlichkeit überprüft. Parallel dazu konnte auf demselben Weg eine Untersuchung von möglichen Verständnisunterschieden beim Lesen der Grafik aufgrund numerischer Fertigkeiten (Numeracy) der Leserin oder des Lesers durchgeführt werden.

Aus der Analyse mit dem Eye-Tracker ergibt sich, dass die beiden Grafiken im Durchschnitt etwa gleich lang angeschaut wurden. Innerhalb der Grafiken wurden textreiche Grafikelemente oder solche, deren Worte der Darstellung halber vertikal geschrieben sind, länger angeschaut. Jene Grafik, die eher beschreibend ist, enthält im Gegensatz zur Tabellarischen zwei vertikal geschriebene Worte und mehr textreiche Elemente. Diese haben für sich etwas mehr Lesezeit zur Folge als ihr Gegenüber der Tabellen-Grafik. Über die Betrachtungsdauer der ganzen Grafik hat sich dies jedoch wieder ausgeglichen. Versuchspersonen, welche diese beschreibende Grafik gesehen hatten, konnten sich im Durchschnitt besser an ihren Inhalt erinnern als jene mit der anderen Grafik. Die beschreibende Grafik wurde auch von den Versuchspersonen für ihre Verständlichkeit besser bewertet als die tabellarische Grafik. Eine weiterführende Studie könnte überprüfen, ob der festgestellte, erhöhte Zeitaufwand beim Lesen einzelner Grafikabschnitte dazu führt, dass der Inhalt der Grafik besser in Erinnerung bleibt. Möglicherweise kommt dies aber noch mehr durch den anderen – vielleicht einfacheren – Wortlaut der beschreibenden Grafik zustande.

Bei den Numeracy-Untersuchungen zeigte sich, dass die High-numerates, also jene Versuchspersonen mit besseren numerischen Fertigkeiten, sich insgesamt etwas besser an die Prozentzahlen der Grafiken erinnerten. Dies gilt im Speziellen für die Tabellen-Grafik. Dort haben sie sich ausserdem für die Betrachtung der Prozentzahlen etwas mehr Zeit gelassen. Bei der beschreibenden Grafik aber sind die Low-numerates bei der Erinnerung an die numerischen Informationen knapp überlegen und haben sich für deren Betrachtung ebenfalls mehr Zeit genommen. Es könnte sein, dass auch hier ein Zusammenhang besteht zwischen der Betrachtungsdauer und der Erinnerung an die (numerischen) Informationen. Als Tendenz lässt sich zusammenfassend festhalten, dass sich High-numerates bei beiden Grafiken einigermassen erfolgreich an die numerischen Informationen erinnern, die Low-numerates hingegen nur bei der beschreibenden Grafik. Wie aus den ersten Untersuchungen hervorgeht, scheint diese ja auch ein wenig verständlicher zu sein. Mit weiteren Untersuchungen – insbesondere mit mehr Versuchspersonen – liesse sich möglicherweise diese Tendenz bestätigen. Daraus könnte man schliessen, was auch in einer Studie von Peters (2008) erwähnt wird, dass die Aufmerksamkeit darauf, wie numerische Information präsentiert wird, nicht nur, aber insbesondere den Low-numerates sehr zu Gute kommt.

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Hodler Regula (2009). Swiss People and Gene Technology in 2008

Although several previous empirical studies have addressed lay people’s knowledge and perception of gene technology, in Switzerland a detailed study about this subject has never been made. Additionally, objective knowledge has almost never been measured in a detailed way. Most studies asked very few knowledge questions to evaluate people’s knowledge of gene technology. The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge of Swiss citizens about biology and gene technology and whether there are differences in knowledge between people of different gender, age class, educational level, or working field. Furthermore, we were interested in the correlation between knowledge and factors such as the acceptance, benefits, or risks of gene technology. Participants (n = 830) responded to a written survey containing 25 knowledge questions about biology and gene technology. Males, respondents between 30 and 54 years and those with a high level of education showed significantly higher knowledge than females, older and younger respondents, and those with a low level of education. Despite of a positive correlation between knowledge and feelings about gene technology, no other significant correlations were found. The knowledge of Swiss citizens about biology and gene technology lay in the same range as the knowledge of other European countries measured in the Eurobarometer (Gaskell et al. 2006) and was higher than the knowledge of citizens of USA (Hallman et al. 2004). The differences in knowledge between genders and different age classes depended on the topic of the single questions. No correlations between knowledge and perception of gene technology were found. We concluded that attitudes towards gene technology do not depend on knowledge.

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Schmid Marc (2008). Analyse des Inhalts von Broschüren zur Mobilkommunikation

In dieser Arbeit wurden einige ausgewählte Broschüren zur Mobilkommunikation untersucht. Das erste Ziel der Arbeit war, einen Überblick über den Umfang wichtiger Themen innerhalb ausgewählter Broschüren zu erhalten. Zweitens sollte eine Analyse des Inhalts Auskunft darüber geben, wie ausführlich Wissen zur Technik und speziell zur Interaktion zwischen Basisstation und Mobiltelefon und den daraus entstehenden Emissionen vermittelt wird. Für die genauere Untersuchung der Broschüren wurden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit zwei Kategorisierungssysteme entwickelt, eine Grob- und eine Feinkategorisierung.

Bei der Grobkategorisierung der Broschüren in verschiedene Oberthemen zeigte sich, dass die Themen "Technik" und "Gesundheit" am meisten Platz in Anspruch nahmen. Im Durchschnitt wurde je ein Viertel des in einer Broschüre vorhandenen Textes diesen Themen zugeordnet. Die Zusammensetzung des Inhaltes der Broschüren war insgesamt sehr variabel. Die Broschüren der Schweizerischen Amtsstellen glichen sich aber. Beinahe die Hälfte des Textes dieser Broschüren behandelte technische Aspekte.

In einem weiteren Arbeitsschritt wurde mithilfe des Feinkategorisierungssystems untersucht, welche technischen Informationen durch die Broschüren vermittelt wurden. Es zeigte sich, dass die Menge an vermitteltem Wissen zu technischen Aspekten je nach Broschüre stark variierte.

Diejenigen Wissenseinheiten, die innerhalb der 22 geprüften Broschüren weniger als fünfmal gefunden wurden, wurden genauer erläutert. Aufgrund der Resultate folgte, dass das Wissen zur Interaktion zwischen Basisstation und Mobiltelefon, welches zur korrekten Beurteilung einer Interaktionssituation und den resultierenden Emissionen notwendig gewesen wäre, in den Broschüren nur selten vermittelt wurde.

Abschliessend empfehle ich, eine Broschüre zu entwickeln, die sich auf Informationen zur Basisstation-Mobiltelefon Interaktion beschränkt. Danach sollte der Einfluss der Broschüre auf die Beurteilung von Antennenstandorten untersucht werden.