This paper investigates the impacts of tasting experience and observing peers’ taste preferences on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for novel insect‐based food products. In an empirical incentivized discrete choice experiment (DCE) developed to estimate Kenyan consumers' WTP for buns made with cricket flour, we test two treatments against a control treatment using a between‐subject design. The control treatment is a typical DCE questionnaire survey. Treatment 1 is identical to the control except that respondents are asked to taste the buns before answering the questionnaire. In Treatment 2, respondents are also given the tasting experience but they additionally observe their peers' taste preferences for the buns. The results suggest that tasting experience is important since Treatment 1 obtains significantly higher WTP estimates than the control. However, allowing additionally for peer effects in Treatment 2 significantly reduces the WTP estimates again countering the effect of tasting in Treatment 1. According to the results, this is partly related to the observation of peers reacting negatively in terms of disliking the bun products. [EconLit Citations: D12, D90, Q13].

中文翻译：

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品尝体验和同伴效应对消费者购买新食品的意愿的影响分析

本文研究了品酒经历和观察同伴的口味偏好对消费者购买新型昆虫基食品的意愿（WTP）的影响。在一项根据经验得出的激励性离散选择实验（DCE）中，估计肯尼亚消费者用粉制成的bun头的WTP，我们使用对象间设计将两种处理与对照处理进行了对比。对照治疗是典型的DCE问卷调查。处理1与对照组相同，除了要求被调查者在回答问卷之前先品尝面包。在治疗2中，受访者还获得了品尝体验，但他们还观察到了同行对面包的口味偏好。结果表明，品酒经历很重要，因为治疗1获得的WTP估算值明显高于对照组。但是，在处理2中额外考虑到同伴效应会大大降低WTP估计值，从而抵消了在处理1中品尝的效果。根据结果，这部分与观察到同伴对不喜欢面包产品的负面反应有关。[EconLit引文：D12，D90，Q13]。