Control or Losing Control: Consumer Perceptions of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Based on Focus Group Findings
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Sense of Control and Need for Order—A Fundamental Motivation
2.2. Compensatory Control—Pathways to Restore the Sense of Control
2.3. Sense of Control and Consumer Behaviours
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Participant Recruitment
3.2. Data Collection and Analysis
4. Findings
4.1. CEA as a Means to Retain Sense of Control
if you can control the growing, you can maximise the nutrients and you can make them even healthier.(Levi, male, aged 26)
I grew up on a farm, so I know that that control side of (CEA) is amazing. Because if you know exactly how much sunlight you’re going to get and how much moisture you’re going to get, you’re going to get the perfect tomato, … you’re going to get the perfect everything.(Daniel, male, aged 34)
I’m pretty for indoor farms, I think it’s the effective and efficient way to move forward. I think total control just means a lot more for everyone. You can grow all year round, you can control everything, you’ve got control quality, so consistent, reliable outcomes.(Husdon, male, aged 23)
I can see the merit in indoor buildings and the like, as the weather gets more fickle. With global issues and its reliability, you’re almost guaranteed to have a crop (from CEA).(Owen, male, aged 57)
Suppose as weather becomes increasingly more unpredictable, you’re going to safeguard against those wild weather events that just destroy a whole season’s worth of crops.(Ben, male, aged 30)
4.2. New Technology as a Threat to Sense of Control
(what about) the long-term health impacts (of CEA produce) and relationships with chronic health conditions or contributing to health conditions, […] do we really know what the impact is over a lifetime?(Lorraine, female, aged 31)
I’m just a bit worried, kind of thinking from a mum’s point of view, what’s going into my child’s body? And we can tell already by the difference between our bodies nowadays and what they would have been back in the day, foods got to have had a lot to play in that.(Aria, female, aged 39)
CEA gives the people who are making it total control, but not that I have any control over my tomatoes getting grown anyway.(Seta, female, aged 37)
You’re taking food production out of the hands of a lot of small people and put them into the hands of one large entity, which does worry me.(Levi, male, aged 26)
if not supported by the government to move to these newer forms of farming, they (small growers) would lose their livelihoods, probably pretty quickly.(Tay, gender-neutral, aged 23)
if using factories and warehouses to grow it, that means they’re gonna become the automated process, so the means less employment.(Logan, male, aged 34)
if we took the complete component of growing things indoors for our own benefit, I wonder what kind of insects and animals and things that the whole ecosystem would rely on may probably die because of that?(Melody, female, aged 24)
looking at things holistically, like not just saying this is food that we’re growing in a room, but actually the effects in how that’s actually going to be supplied from outside, and whether it’s going to cause a deficit somewhere else to make this happen.(Sheila, female, aged 56)
4.3. Strategies of Compensatory Control
people are only scared of the unknown, scared of things they don’t understand. So if there was a lot more education and clarification, if there was information put out about it, and it was more kind of normalised, I feel like people wouldn’t be so afraid of it.(Amanda, female, aged 20)
as long as people are educated about how it’s grown, where it’s come from, they’d be much more open to it.(Flora, female, aged 39)
definitely some kind of government oversight or scientific oversight (is needed) as well, just to make sure that we’re doing things with a view of the wider community, and the nature and that sort of thing, all those things are taken into consideration, not just profits money.(Mike, male, aged 40)
I’d 100% rather eat food that was grown locally, under the sun, in a regenerative farm, for example, knowing that the nutrients were natural, not synthetic, the nutrients were cycled through the natural nutrient cycles that have existed for millions of years, and the subtle nuances that exist in those ecosystems, (which) do make a difference in the quality of the food and the health of the food.(Oliver, male, aged 35)
5. Discussion
6. Contributions, Limitations, and Future Research
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Gan, I.C.; Conroy, D.M. Control or Losing Control: Consumer Perceptions of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Based on Focus Group Findings. Sustainability 2024, 16, 4883. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16124883
Gan IC, Conroy DM. Control or Losing Control: Consumer Perceptions of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Based on Focus Group Findings. Sustainability. 2024; 16(12):4883. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16124883
Chicago/Turabian StyleGan, Ivy Caixia, and Denise Maria Conroy. 2024. "Control or Losing Control: Consumer Perceptions of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Based on Focus Group Findings" Sustainability 16, no. 12: 4883. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16124883