2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Economic Analysis of Food Values: An International Comparison Study
| Project/Area Number |
19H03061
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
弦間 正彦 早稲田大学, 社会科学総合学術院, 教授 (90231729)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
合崎 英男 北海道大学, 農学研究院, 准教授 (00343765)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Food Value / International Comparison / Economic Analysis / Stated Preference Method / Hypothetical Bias |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
People’s food choices can be explained by their preferences for more abstract food quality attributes or so called “food values”. This study proposes to examine food values using a stated preference method (i.e., best-worst scaling (BWS) approach) in Asia, the United States (US) and Europe.
We conducted online BWS choice experiments for Japan and compared the results from the United States and Europe (Bazzani et al., 2018). The food value information as well as demographical data were collected from a sample of 3,000 persons from all the regions and all the age groups considering geographical and generational representations in Japan. This was to compare the food values for the economies with different stages of economic development in different regions of the world.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We have been able to derive the following findings and conclusions.
1.Safety of food is considered most important for Japanese consumers. However, the magnitude of the importance is not as high as the counterparts in the United States and Europe. Nutrients are not considered as important as these areas in Japan. A similar result can be found for animal welfare, novelty and fairness. Tradition is not considered important.
2.Non-importance of appearance is a common reaction among the three groups of consumers. The characteristics that are not considered more important than the other two groups are convenience and production origin.
3.Non-significant characteristics are different among three groups with the exception of unpopular factor of novelty.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We plan to expand our scope of the study to include transition economics in Europe to find similarities and differences in food values, and the to identify the reasons for the differences. These are to derive general observations.
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