Merlino Valentina Maria, Renna Manuela, Nery Joana, Muresu Arianna, Ricci Alessandro, Maggiolino Aristide, Celano Giuseppe, De Ruggieri Barbara, Tarantola Martina
Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Turin, L.go P. Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, TO, Italy.
Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Turin, L.go P. Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, TO, Italy.
Animals (Basel). 2022 May 31;12(11):1421. doi: 10.3390/ani12111421.
Consumers are increasingly aware of the benefits of local foods in terms of quality, sustainability, animal welfare, and safety. This research addresses two main questions: (i) is the perception towards sustainability aspects of local dairy products related to individuals' preferences for milk and cheese quality aspects? (ii) are these perceptions related to people's socio-demographic characteristics? For this purpose, a choice experiment was conducted online in Apulia (South-East Italy) involving a sample of 543 respondents. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to analyze the consumer opinion related to dairy products' quality attributes, sustainability, and availability on the market. From the PCA, four main components (accounting the 64.5% of the total explained variance) were defined, highlighting non-overlapping choice styles of consumers, distinguished by attitudes primarily based on quality attributes of dairy products rather than sustainability characteristics or perceived higher quality of local products. Furthermore, the Availability request component described the consumer need for higher availability and/or visibility of local dairy products on the market. The effect of gender, age, and educational status of individuals emerged as significantly important for the resulting component definitions. The obtained results clearly suggest the need to increase the efficiency of communication strategies concerning local dairy products, as well as local dairy products' availability and visibility on the markets.
消费者越来越意识到本地食品在质量、可持续性、动物福利和安全方面的益处。本研究探讨了两个主要问题：（i）对本地乳制品可持续性方面的认知是否与个人对牛奶和奶酪质量方面的偏好相关？（ii）这些认知是否与人们的社会人口特征相关？为此，在意大利东南部的普利亚地区进行了一项在线选择实验，涉及543名受访者的样本。应用主成分分析（PCA）来分析消费者对乳制品质量属性、可持续性和市场可得性的看法。通过主成分分析，定义了四个主要成分（占总解释方差的64.5%），突出了消费者不重叠的选择方式，这些方式主要基于乳制品的质量属性而非可持续性特征或对本地产品更高质量的认知来区分态度。此外，“可得性需求”成分描述了消费者对本地乳制品在市场上更高可得性和/或可见性的需求。个人的性别、年龄和教育程度对最终的成分定义具有显著重要影响。所得结果清楚地表明，有必要提高有关本地乳制品的沟通策略的效率，以及本地乳制品在市场上的可得性和可见性。
