Project partner: Consumer Behavior, Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Leeds University Business School

PLANTAR aims to foster public engagement and dialogue on agricultural innovation by exploring societal perceptions of beneficial applications of new breeding techniques, understanding value-based reasons for rejection and generating actionable evidence through diverse research methods and virtual reality technology. HF Partners will act as a project and dissemination partner and will co-supervise the PhD student working in the project at ETH Zurich.

The following four research steps are planned:

• Survey of Swiss citizens on their relationship with nature, values and views of established and new breeding techniques
• Series of experiments with citizens from Switzerland and the United Kingdom on familiarity, naturalness and acceptance of new breeding techniques
• Virtual reality experiment in Switzerland and the United Kingdom to investigate consumers’ preferences regarding the labelling of products derived from new breeding techniques
• Focus group discussions to discuss real use cases of new breeding techniques that could be implemented in Switzerland

The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation within National Research Programme 84.