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The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers apply clean-eating criteria to a range of food characteristics, and the extent to which individuals are consistent in how they apply clean-eating criteria across products. Further, this study investigates how the clean-eating approach relates to underlying food choice motives.

Data were collected in a consumer survey (n = 666) in Sweden, where participants were prompted about the importance of a set of intrinsic food attributes of the “free-from” and “added” types, for three different food product types (bread, processed meat, ready meals). Data were analyzed using latent class cluster analysis, to explore segments of consumers that place similar importance to the food characteristics and hold similar food choice motives.

Clean eating can be described by two distinctly different attainment strategies: avoiding undesirable characteristics or by simultaneously approaching desirable characteristics. Notably, individuals who apply clean-eating criteria in their food choices strive for healthy, natural and environmentally friendly food, but the clean-by-approach strategy implies a stronger focus on personal health in the form of weight control.

While claims and labels on food packages concerning clean eating are implemented by food manufacturers, it remains unregulated. This study provides information for future regulations on how consumers apply clean-eating criteria, and their motives thereof. Further, the results provide insights food manufacturers regarding motives for clean eating in different consumer segments.

People’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control random events, known as illusion of control, can affect financial decisions under uncertainty. This study developed an artifactual field experiment on illusion of control for a farm machinery investment.

In an experiment with two treatments, the individual farmer was either given or not given a sense of control over a random outcome. After each decision, the authors elicited perceived control, and a questionnaire collected additional indirect measures of illusion of control from 78 German farmers and 10 farm advisors.

The results did not support preregistered hypotheses of the presence of illusion of control. This null result was robust over multiple outcomes and model specifications. The findings demonstrate that cognitive biases may be small and difficult to replicate.

The sample is not representative for the German farming population. The authors discuss why the estimated treatment effect may represent a lower bound of the true effect.

Illusion of control is well-studied in laboratory settings, but little is known about the extent to which farmers’ behavior is influenced by illusion of control.

Potato is a major food staple in Africa, but its production is constrained by poor quality of seed. A recent private–public partnership in Tanzania resulted in introduction of new higher yielding varieties. The purpose of this paper is to examine smallholder farmers’ motivations to invest in the purchase of quality seed of new potato varieties, and if the motivational structure differs by gender.

The paper used means-end chain (MEC) theory combined with goal priming, and laddering interviews on randomly sampled participants (n=45) of an experimental auction conducted among smallholder farmers in Tanzania. The auction was designed to goal-prime respondents on benefits of quality seed. The mental constructs obtained were grouped into attributes, consequences and values, and MECAnalyst software used to generate hierarchical value maps.

Farmers invest in quality seed of a new variety to increase yields, hence income, and also to pursue personal life goals (values) or meet psychosocial needs. The structure of mental constructs associated with the decision to invest in quality seed of a new variety differ by gender.

The study focused on only two new varieties, hence not robust to all new potato varieties. Results need to be tested under different socioeconomic contexts. Furthermore, the MEC approach does not allow for control of other variables that likely influence farmer adoption decision-making process. Future studies should be designed to tackle these limitations.

Investment in quality seed of new variety is driven by monetary goals and psychosocial factors, and some of these factors differ between male and female farmers.

This is the first study to explore drivers of farmers’ decision to use quality seed of a new variety using MEC analysis, and role psychosocial factors play.

The purpose of this study was to develop a behavioural framework for developing a scale to measure farmers' attitudes to animal welfare and health and to take an explorative approach to initiating development of such a scale.

A literature review was used to develop the behavioural framework. Exploratory factor analysis was then used to initiate development of a measurement scale, based on a sample of 108 Swedish livestock farmers.

Based on the framework developed, the authors' data suggest unidimensionality of farmers' attitudes to animal welfare and health; and that farmers perceive animal welfare as being about animal health and comfort in particular.

Further research should be devoted to this area to develop a more final measurement scale. This could be done by re‐evaluating the scale obtained in this paper in both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis settings. The behavioural framework proposed here provides a basis for such scale development and a more rigid framework for evaluating and comparing farmers' attitudes to animal welfare.

The behavioural framework and scale development initiated in this paper can be used by policymakers and organizations responsible for quality assurance schemes to develop policy measures and education programmes to re‐train farmers' behaviour into a system that supports higher animal welfare and health standards.

The originality of this paper is that it develops and uses a behavioural framework based on psychological and psychometric theory to initiate development of a scale to measure farmers' attitudes to animal welfare and health.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers’ perception of food safety for vegetables at traditional urban market outlets in a developing country context and test whether curiosity-motivated information acquisition and personal control over choice of stimuli influence consumer involvement, resulting in more differentiated mental models.

The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) in standard and modified form was used to develop consumers’ mental models for food safety.

The cognitive content and structure of aggregated consumers’ mental models were identified and mapped. The maps included negative and positive meanings, indicating a need to tackle the hygiene problems prevailing in most traditional markets. ZMET generated a more differentiated map when people were empowered with a camera to collect stimuli.

Using ZMET to understand food safety perceptions avoids consumers being led in their responses, views and feelings about food safety.

Policy, regulatory frameworks and marketing actions by value chain actors in the fresh vegetable subsector should give priority to tackling the hygiene problem prevalent in most traditional markets in developing countries.

This paper provides novel needs-driven theoretical and practical insights into the actual meaning representation of food safety, which actually drives consumer thoughts and behaviour. Making use of a camera in the collection of self-provided images for the ZMET interview led to higher levels of involvement and further differentiation of mental models.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel measure of access to credit suited to estimate the relative change in credit reserves.

A debt possibility frontier is estimated using data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist index is calculated. The Malmquist index is redubbed the Debt Development index and decomposed into “change in debt capacity” and “change in debt capacity utilization”. Bootstrapping is applied for statistical inference. The method is applied to an unbalanced panel of 92,000 Danish farm accounts from 1996 to 2009.

The paper finds that credit capacity roughly doubled for Danish farmers over the period, and that utilization of credit capacity generally was proportional to capacity change, utilization being higher for dairy and pig farms, than for crop farms.

Changes in credit reserves may have important implications for risk management practice, investment and technology adoption and related policy issues. The method is limited by the possibility of strategic behavior of lenders during credit cycle busts. In credit cycle booms, the method gives a good basis for the estimates of change in credit reserves.

In a period of increasing credit reserves, risk management institutions are unlikely to develop. Like agricultural policy, access to credit may crowd out market-based risk management.

The study represents a novel application and interpretation of a well-known method.