Framing sustainable food production technologies with videos – data from an experiment with German consumers

This pre-registered dataset was generated to investigate the effect of framing on consumer acceptance of beneficial soil-microbes in tomato production. For this purpose, an online experiment was conducted with 754 consumers in Germany in 2022. A market research agency recruited participants from their online panel, and quotas for a representative sample of the adult German consumer population were applied. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following three experimental groups: gain-framing, loss-framing or a control group. Each group received a short video clip with information about beneficial soil-microbes, in which either gain-framing, loss-framing or no framing was applied. The following constructs were surveyed before video exposure: demographics, tomato consumption frequency, attitudes towards conventionally produced tomatoes and subjective knowledge of soil-microbes. The items and constructs collected after video exposure were: purchase intentions, explicit and implicit attitude towards tomatoes produced with beneficial soil-microbes, organic consumption behavior and an evaluation of different food production methods. A single-target category implicit-association test (ST-IAT) was used to measure the implicit attitude, and all other constructs were measured through self-reported survey items. The main concept of interest is the acceptance of beneficial soil-microbes, which can be inferred from consumers’ intentions and attitudes after video exposure. The dataset can be used to analyze the effect of video-based communication on consumer acceptance. Moreover, the effect of video-based communication on other outcome variables can be analyzed, such as the evaluation of different production methods and other exploratory purposes. Further, it can be explored whether organic consumption behavior or socio-demographic statistics play a mediating role on the effect of information framing. This might be of relevance for other researchers to determine the potential of video-based communication to influence consumers’ acceptance of future innovations in the food sector.