Combining different neurosciences and experimental economics methods for investigating consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for new controversial food technologies.

A large number of studies have attempted to investigate consumers’ preferences for new food products produced using new controversial food technologies (e.g. GMO) using traditional surveys and well established experimental marketing methods (i.e. conjoint analysis, experimental auctions, etc.). However, these methods are affected by several issues (i.e. consumers might lie or give socially acceptable answers on surveys, consumers often do not know why they do things they do, etc.) that limit a more realistic understanding about consumer behaviour towards new controversial food technologies. Recently, new research approaches based on neuroscience are helping us to open the "black-box" (i.e. consumer brain) which might help to trace the consumer decision making process when approaching new food controversial technologies. In the context of neuroscience, neuroeconomics contribute to explaining in a descriptive and predictive way the human decision-making process by investigating the neural functioning and associated implications for economic and consumer behaviour. Different neurosciences techniques are available to investigate consumers’ preferences and decision-making such as for example Electroencephalography (EEG), Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eye-tracking, mouse-tracking, etc.). These techniques have shown to improve our understanding about consumer behaviour, however, some difficulties of combining these techniques with more traditional survey and experimental approaches have been detected as well as the use of method at the time might limit our better understanding. The main goal of this project is to combine different neurosciences and traditional marketing research methods for better investigating consumer decision-making using food products produced with new controversial food technologies. For more detailed information, please contact: Dr. Daniele Asioli (email: [Email Address Removed]).