10 pages, In vitro meat (IVM) grown from animal cells is approaching commercial viability. This technology could enable consumers to circumvent the ethical and environmental issues associated with meat-eating. However, consumer acceptance of IVM is uncertain, and is partly dependent on how the product is framed. This study investigated the effect of different names for IVM on measures of consumer acceptance. Participants (N = 185) were allocated to one of four conditions in an experimental design in which the product name was manipulated to be ‘clean meat’, ‘cultured meat’, ‘animal free meat’, or ‘lab grown meat’. Participants gave word associations and measures of their attitudes and behavioural intentions towards the product. The results indicated that those in the ‘clean meat’ and ‘animal free meat’ conditions had significantly more positive attitudes towards IVM than those in the ‘lab grown meat’ condition, and those in the ‘clean meat’ condition had significantly more positive behavioural intentions towards IVM compared to those in the ‘lab grown meat’ condition. Mediation analyses indicated that the valence of associations accounted for a significant amount of the observed differences, suggesting that anchoring can explain these differences. We discuss these results in the context of social representations theory and give recommendations for future research.
14 pages, As agricultural conservation priorities evolve to address new complex social-ecological problems and emerging social priorities, new conservation incentive program participation and success can be enhanced by incorporating local stakeholder preferences into program design. Our research explores how farmers incorporate ecosystem services into management decisions, their willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, and factors beyond compensation level that would influence participation. We conducted three focus groups with 24 participants between January of 2019 and May of 2019 in Vermont. Our study revealed that a strong, intrinsic stewardship ethic motivates farmers to enhance ecosystem service provisioning from their farms, though financial pressures often limit decision-making. These results suggest that programs with sufficient levels of payment may attract participation, at least among some types of farmers, to enhance ecosystem services from farms in Vermont. However, farmers may be deterred from participating by perceived unfairness and distrust of the government based on previous experiences with regulations and conservation incentive structures. Farmers also expressed distrust of information about ecosystem services supply that conflicts with their perceptions of agroecosystem functioning, unless delivered by trusted individuals from the extension system. The delivery of context-specific information on how management changes impact ecosystem service performance from trusted sources could enhance farmers’ decisions, and would aptly complement payments. Additionally, farmers expressed a desire to see a program that both achieves additionality and rewards farms who have been stewards, goals that are potentially at odds. Our findings offer important insights for policy makers and program administrators who need to understand factors that will influence farmers’ willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem service programs and other conservation practice adoption initiatives, in Vermont and elsewhere.
