Fresh produce within vertical farming systems grows vertically in different layers stacked atop each other, thus allowing for the efficient use of space. As the environment in vertical farming systems is completely controlled, neither sunlight nor soil is necessary. On the one hand, vertical farming may help to provide a healthy diet for the growing global population because it has a greater crop yield per square meter used than conventional farming; moreover, it can offer the opportunity to grow food in climatically disadvantaged areas. On the other hand, growth conditions may be perceived as unnatural and the entire vertical farming system as unsustainable. Therefore, understanding the consumers’ acceptance of vertical farming systems is important. This study is the first work to provide insights into consumers’ acceptance of three different vertical farming systems. Data are collected through an online survey of 482 consumers in Germany in February 2018. Drivers of consumer acceptance of vertical farming systems are identified through structural equation modelling. The results indicate that perceived sustainability is the major driver of consumer acceptance of vertical farming systems. The larger the system, the higher the likelihood that it will be considered as sustainable. Obviously, consumers perceive something like ecologies of scale.

High sugar intake in humans is associated with the development of overweight and other diet-related diseases. The World Health Organization and other health organizations recommend limiting the sugar intake to 10% of the total energy intake. There have been different approaches of front-of-pack labelling to reduce the amount of sugar in food products. Companies use nutrition claims to advertise the sugar content (e.g., without added sugar, 30% less sugar). Such nutrition claims can lead to false assumptions about the healthiness of foods and can lead to health-halo effects. Nutrition claims make products appear healthier than they really are, the aspect advertised in the nutrition claim is transferred to the entire food product. As a result, food products can be perceived as healthy even though they are not. Recently, the Nutri-Score was introduced in an increasing number of countries throughout Europe to provide consumers with an overview of the overall nutritional quality of a product. This study analyzes if the Nutri-Score can help to prevent health-halo effects caused by nutrition claims on sugar. Therefore, an online survey consisting of a split-sample design with more than 1,000 respondents was assessed. The results show that, depending on the initial perceived healthiness of a product, the Nutri-Score is able to prevent health-halo effects caused by claims on sugar. Making the Nutri-Score mandatory when using nutrition claims would be one possible way to reduce misperceptions about unhealthy food and reduce health-halo effects caused by claims on sugar.

The evidence for the effectiveness of nutrition policy interventions is growing. For the implementation of such interventions, social acceptability is crucial. Therefore, this study provides insight into public support for nutrition policy measures such as labelling and taxation. Further it analyses the level of acceptance in a quantitative segmentation approach. A new element to our approach is the comparison of different policy instruments, focusing on the interaction between policy acceptance and the perceived individual struggle to eat healthily. The survey was conducted in November 2017 and a total of 1035 German consumers are included in the data. The results indicate that the majority of German citizens accept nutrition policy interventions. Based on a cluster analysis, five different target groups according to the general acceptance of policy interventions and their own struggle to eat healthily are derived. The five-cluster solution reveals that both consumers who tend to eat a healthy diet as well as those who have problems with their diet support nutritional interventions. This shows that the perceived own struggle to eat healthily does not predict whether consumers accept nutrition policy interventions.