TY - JOUR
T1 - Consumers' Perception of Urban Farming—An Exploratory Study
AU - Grebitus, Carola
AU - Chenarides, Lauren
AU - Muenich, Rebecca
AU - Mahalov, Alex
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding. This work was supported by EASM-3: Collaborative Research: Physics-Based Predictive Modeling for Integrated Agricultural and Urban Applications, USDA-NIFA (Grant Number: 2015-67003-23508), NSF-MPS-DMS (Award Number: 1419593), and by the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2020 Grebitus, Chenarides, Muenich and Mahalov.
PY - 2020/6/12
Y1 - 2020/6/12
N2 - Urban agriculture offers the opportunity to provide fresh, local food to urban communities. However, urban agriculture can only be successfully embedded in urban areas if consumers perceive urban farming positively and accept urban farms in their community. Success of urban agriculture is rooted in positive perception of those living close by, and the perception strongly affects acceptance of farming within individuals' direct proximity. This research investigates perception and acceptance of urban agriculture through a qualitative, exploratory field study with N = 19 residents from a major metropolitan area in the southwest U.S. Specifically, in this exploratory research we implement the method of concept mapping testing its use in the field of Agroecology and Ecosystem Services. In the concept mapping procedure, respondents are free to write down all the associations that come to mind when presented with a stimulus, such as, “urban farming.” When applying concept mapping, participants are asked to recall associations and then directly link them to each other displaying their knowledge structure, i.e., perception. Data were analyzed using content analysis and semantic network analysis. Consumers' perception of urban farming is related to the following categories: environment, society, economy, and food and attributes. The number of positive associations is much higher than the number of negative associations signaling that consumers would be likely to accept farming close to where they live. Furthermore, our findings show that individuals' perceptions can differ greatly in terms of what they associate with urban farming and how they evaluate it. While some only think of a few things, others have well-developed knowledge structures. Overall, investigating consumers' perception helps designing strategies for the successful adoption of urban farming.
AB - Urban agriculture offers the opportunity to provide fresh, local food to urban communities. However, urban agriculture can only be successfully embedded in urban areas if consumers perceive urban farming positively and accept urban farms in their community. Success of urban agriculture is rooted in positive perception of those living close by, and the perception strongly affects acceptance of farming within individuals' direct proximity. This research investigates perception and acceptance of urban agriculture through a qualitative, exploratory field study with N = 19 residents from a major metropolitan area in the southwest U.S. Specifically, in this exploratory research we implement the method of concept mapping testing its use in the field of Agroecology and Ecosystem Services. In the concept mapping procedure, respondents are free to write down all the associations that come to mind when presented with a stimulus, such as, “urban farming.” When applying concept mapping, participants are asked to recall associations and then directly link them to each other displaying their knowledge structure, i.e., perception. Data were analyzed using content analysis and semantic network analysis. Consumers' perception of urban farming is related to the following categories: environment, society, economy, and food and attributes. The number of positive associations is much higher than the number of negative associations signaling that consumers would be likely to accept farming close to where they live. Furthermore, our findings show that individuals' perceptions can differ greatly in terms of what they associate with urban farming and how they evaluate it. While some only think of a few things, others have well-developed knowledge structures. Overall, investigating consumers' perception helps designing strategies for the successful adoption of urban farming.
KW - cognitive structures
KW - concept mapping
KW - exploratory
KW - semantic network
KW - urban agriculture
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087164106&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85087164106&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fsufs.2020.00079
DO - 10.3389/fsufs.2020.00079
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087164106
SN - 2571-581X
VL - 4
JO - Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
JF - Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
M1 - 79
ER -