Domenico Dentoni

The Direct and Indirect Effects of 'Locally Grown' on Consumers' Attitudes towards Agri-Food Products

Recent agricultural economics literature has largely analyzed consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for many credence attributes, including place of origin, organic, locally grown, environment-friendly, fair trade, and animal welfare. In this study, we instead attempt to analyze why consumers value “locally grown,” which is a credence attribute receiving increasing attention in the market. Specifically, we propose a distinction between the direct effect and the indirect effect of “locally grown” on consumers’ attitudes towards agri-food products to explain consumers’ preferences for locally grown products. We collect data from an experiment with university students and analyze the data with a structural equation modeling methodology.

The complexity of wicked problems in large scale change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend and elaborate the notion of successful organizational change to incorporate the concept of large system change (LSC), by developing a framework that brings together complexity and wicked problems theories to understand how individual organizations and change agents can better influence LSC. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper integrates wicked problems and complexity theories to understand and cope with large system initiatives from the perspective of change agents in organizations, and uses the case of the electricity system as an illustrative example for these concepts. Findings – The paper provides implications for LSC and action steps for change agents in organizations, arguing that by understanding change initiatives through the lenses of complexity and wicked problems, change agents are likely to be more effective. Research limitations/implications – The integration of complexity science and wicked problems underpins the development of...

A Reward for Patience and Suffering: Ethnomycology and Commodification of Desert Truffles among Sahrawi Refugees and Nomads of Western Sahara

A Reward for Patience and Suffering: Ethnomycology and Commodification of Desert Truffles among Sahrawi Refugees and Nomads of Western Sahara. This paper reflects on the role of ethnobiological knowledge and practices for refugees’ agency by focusing on the use and commodification of desert truffles among the Sahrawi refugees of Western Sahara. Historically, desert truffles of the genera Terfezia and Tirmania have been an important food and medicinal resource for Saharan nomads. Today, after becoming refugees following war and forced displacement, the Sahrawi still harvest truffles for their use values, but most are sold in the Algerian town of Tindouf. This paper addresses Sahrawi food, medicinal, and veterinary uses of desert truffles, and the on–going process of commodification sustained by a high international demand and the need for cash income. This process of commodification has both helped refugees to generate income and triggered a recovery of traditional knowledge around desert truffles. However, it has also led to increasing harvesting pressure and competition among truffle collectors, thus giving rise to the risk of unsustainable harvest levels.Una recompensa a la paciencia y el sufrimiento: La etnomicología y la mercantilización de las trufas del desierto entre los nómadas y refugiados saharauis del Sáhara Occidental. Este artículo reflexiona sobre el papel de los conocimientos etnobiológicos para los refugiados, centrándose en el uso y la comercialización de trufas del desierto entre los refugiados saharauis del Sáhara Occidental. Las trufas del desierto de los géneros Terfezia y Tirmania históricamente han sido un recurso importante para los nómadas del Sahara. Hoy en día, tras la guerra y los desplazamientos forzados, convertidos en refugiados, los saharauis aún cosechan trufas por sus numerosas propiedades, aunque comercializan la mayor parte de la cosecha con la ciudad argelina de Tinduf, a fin de obtener algunos ingresos económicos. En el presente trabajo se aborda el uso alimentario, medicinal y veterinario de las trufas del desierto entre los saharauis, y su actual proceso de mercantilización gracias a la alta demanda internacional. Este proceso ayuda a los refugiados a realizar actividades que les generan un ingreso, al mismo tiempo que ha favorecido la recuperación de los conocimientos tradicionales en torno a la trufa del desierto. Asimismo, la comercialización de trufas ha dado lugar a un aumento de intensidad de la cosecha y a una competición entre cosechadores, abriendo la posibilidad de niveles de recolección insostenibles.

Organisational drivers of capabilities for multi-stakeholder dialogue and knowledge integration

Business and policy actors increasingly make use of multi-stakeholder interactions (MSI) as a corporate social responsibility strategy to understand, influence, harmonise and meet stakeholders’ social, environmental and financial expectations and so to create value. While many researchers and practitioners have recently described the role of MSI for sustainable innovation and development, little is known about how organisations can develop a capability to effectively create and maintain a dialogue with stakeholders and learn from them. The paper explores the organisational characteristics driving two key capabilities needed for effective MSI: stakeholder dialogue and knowledge integration. Based on the empirical evidence from four business cases, the research follows an explorative approach building upon stakeholder and organisational learning theories. Findings indicate that the ‘involvement of senior management and employees’, ‘open culture’, ‘vision towards sustainability’ and ‘hierarchical structure’ are key drivers of stakeholder dialogue and knowledge integration capabilities.

Disentangling direct and indirect effects of credence labels

– The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the direct and indirect effects of three credence labels (Australian, animal welfare and grass-fed) on US consumer attitudes toward buying beef steaks. Furthermore, it explores the impact of consumer attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength on the magnitude of direct and indirect effects. , – Data are collected through an online experiment with 460 US consumers and analyzed with path modeling. , – The Australian label generates a 86 percent negative direct effect vs a 14 percent negative indirect effect on consumer attitudes, which means that US consumers do not make strong inferences to form their attitudes toward buying Australian beef. The animal welfare label generates 50 percent direct and 50 percent indirect effects. The grass-fed label generates only indirect effects (100 percent). The higher consumer education, attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength, the weaker are the indirect effects of credence labels. , – The study focusses on consumers in one country (USA), one product (beef steak) and one label across three attributes, therefore generalization of results is limited. , – The study offers a tool to agribusiness managers as well as to policy makers, NGOs and consumer groups to design and assess the effectiveness of communication campaigns attempting to strengthen (or weaken) consumer inferences and attitudes relative to credence labels. , – Despite the wide literature on consumer inferences based on credence labels, this is the first study that quantitatively disentangles the complex set of inferential effects generated by credence labels and explores common relationships across multiple credence attributes.

Consumer Entrepreneurship: What Is It? When, How, and Why Does It Emerge?

The objective of this chapter is to understand innovative processes of resource redeployment taking place during consumption. We label this as consumer entrepreneurship. We define consumer entrepreneurship as the process of sharing and recombining resources innovatively to seek opportunities for self-creating user value. Through the illustration of heterogeneous forms of consumer peer-to-peer sharing, we argue that consumer entrepreneurship: (1) differs ontologically from a view of entrepreneurship as creation of exchange value; (2) bridges the notion, established in marketing studies, of consumers as value creators with the field of entrepreneurship; (3) develops mostly when the process of sharing is regulated informally, based on trust relationships; and (4) thrives as groups of sharing consumers discover and enact their values through the experimentation of multiple forms of product and service procurement. On the basis of these points, consumer entrepreneurship contributes to provide a novel perspective on hybrid organizations, that is, a view of hybrid organizations as everyday spaces where consumers create heterogeneous forms of (utilitarian, social, or environmental) value that they personally use as opposed to reward exchanges. Relative to the current definition of hybrid organizations (Pache & Santos, 2013) and organizing (Battilana & Lee, 2014), we argue that consumer entrepreneurship helps better explain “why, when, and how” consumers increasingly engage in peer-to-peer sharing organizations – a fledging and still underexplored way of organizing consumption worldwide.