Paying for the Greater Good?—What Information Matters for Beijing Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Plant-Based Meat?

Promoting the transition from animal meat to plant-based food consumption has significant benefits for public health and environmental sustainability. This study, involving 526 consumers from Beijing, China, explores how food attributes and information may affect consumers’ food choices concerning plant-based meat products. A discrete choice experiment was conducted using burgers with five attributes (meat patties, flavor, sodium content, energy, and price) as the focal product. Separate messages on nutrition, food safety, and the environmental issues related to plant-based meat consumption were also randomly provided to consumers to help examine the role of information. Our findings suggest that Beijing consumers’ awareness of plant-based meat is relatively low at present, and they show a negative preference toward plant-based meat consumption relative to that of conventional meat. However, consumers’ willingness to pay for plant-based meat significantly increased after nutrition information was provided, but it was not responsive to the provision of food safety or environmental information. These findings suggest that to promote plant-based meat consumption, information closely related to consumers’ personal interests rather the “greater good” should be provided, at least in the context of Beijing, China

Chinese consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for traceable food attributes: The case of pork

China is a large consumer and producer of pork. However, pork is a common food that frequently suffers from safety problems in China. Thus, the safety of pork is of important strategic significance to China's food safety. The food traceability system is considered a major tool for the fundamental prevention of food safety risks. In this study, four attributes, i.e., traceability information, quality certification, appearance, and price, were set for traceable pork on the basis of previous studies. Levels were set for the attribute traceability information based on the major processes of safety risk in the Chinese pork supply chain. For the level setting of quality certification, domestic and international third-party certification was included in addition to government certification. Levels of price were set by appropriately increasing the average price of pork in cities surveyed in September 2013 according to the premiums that consumers were willing to pay for particular attribute levels in a random nth price auction. Based on the above experimental design, a survey was conducted in 1,489 consumers in seven pilot cities designated by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce for construction of a meat circulation traceability system. On this basis, consumer preferences and willingness to pay for traceable pork attributes, as well as influencing factors, were investigated using choice experiments. According to the results from both mixed logit and latent class models, quality certification was the most important characteristic, followed by appearance, and traceability information. In addition, “government certification”, “fresh-looking”, and “traceability information covering farming, slaughter, and processing, and circulation and marketing” were the most preferred levels of quality certification, appearance, and traceability information, respectively. Significant heterogeneity was observed in consumer preferences for the attributes of traceable pork. Consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for traceability information and quality certification were significantly influenced by age, monthly family income, and education level. It is hoped that the findings of this study will provide a useful reference for the Chinese government in improving traceable food consumption policies

A facile method to improve the stability and efficiency of CsPbI2Br perovskite solar cells prepared at low temperature

CsPbI2Br has become the focus of researchers in recent years due to its excellent thermal stability compared to the organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites. However, it requires high temperature to form cubic phase, and it is difficult to maintain the cubic phase in the high humidity ambient. By adding 30 mu L levulinic acid (LA) to the CsPbI2Br precursor solution, cubic phase CsPbI2Br can be obtained by spin-coating three minutes (TMS) at room temperature (RT) instead of high temperature. Based on the TMS, highly quality cubic phase CsPbI2Br film can be obtained at 80 degrees C annealing temperature, the stability of cubic phase CsPbI2Br can be significantly improved by adding LA in the CsPbI2Br precursor solution. Based on this, CsPbI2Br cells without LA achieve 11.68% power conversion efficiency (PCE) at low temperature of 80 degrees C and the corresponding stabilized power output is 10.31%. Furthermore, 10 mu L LA addition CsPbI2Br cells keep its 50% PCE after 10 days under 35%RH and RT. This has found a new way to improve the stability of inorganic perovskite solar cells, and increasing its potential in flexible solar cells

Achieving multifunctional smart textile with long afterglow and thermo-regulation via coaxial electrospinning

People working in extremely cold environments, such as traffic police in the winter, need clothes that can keep them warm and show safety signals simultaneously, which is very meaningful for them. Based on such a requirement, developing the smart textiles integrating thermal regulation and luminescence functions is highly desired. Here, we utilized the coaxial electrospinning to achieve luminous thermo-regulated smart textiles. The paraffin wax (PW) and long afterglow phosphors were incorporated into the nanofiber with the PW as core and the polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/phosphors as sheath successfully. Moreover, the textiles possess the PW encapsulation efficiency of 52.1% (enthalpy of 64.08 J/g) and the afterglow can last for about 1 h. Hence, this work paves a novel avenue for multifunctional textiles and provides a meaningful guidance for comfort smart wearable. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved