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Californian wine consumer consumption behaviours and product preferences: A Latent Class Analysis of New Zealand Sauvignon blanc
No full textThis study is part of a research programme entitled Unlocking Export Prosperity from the Agri-food Values of Aotearoa New Zealand. It is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Endeavour Fund for science research programmes.
The research aims to provide new knowledge on how local enterprises can achieve higher returns by ensuring global consumers understand the distinctive qualities of the physical, credence and cultural attributes of agri-food products that are “Made in New Zealand”.
Agricultural exports are an important contributor to the New Zealand (NZ) economy. While NZ historically relied on key markets such as the United Kingdom for export trade, NZ has more recently significantly expanded its export markets and the United States of America (USA) has become established as an important wine product destination. It is critically important for NZ exporters to understand export markets and the different cultures and preferences of those consumers to safeguard market access, and for realising potential premiums.
This report describes the application of a survey of Californian Sauvignon blanc consumers that is designed to examine consumption behaviour and consumer Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for credence attributes. While search attributes such as price or colour can be observed directly, and experience attributes such as flavour can be assessed when consumed, credence attributes such as environmental sustainability cannot be immediately seen or experienced at the point of sale. For products promoting credence attributes, the role of verification including labelling is of significant importance.
Our approach is to apply a Discrete Choice Experiment economic valuation method, analysed using a statistical approach called Latent Class Modelling that describes profiles for different consumer segments identified in the data and provides estimates of attribute WTP across these segments
Pollinator’s microbes and the fruit microbiome interactions
No full textPollinators facilitate the transfer of pollen between flowers however, they may also transfer microbes while accessing nectar and pollen. This transfer of pollinator microbes helps shape the flower microbiome and additionally may play a part in the fruit microbiome. This microbial route of transmission between pollinator-flower-fruit has not been examined fully. This is a novel concept that has not been discussed in the scientific literature and there is a gap in this space. How the different plant (floral and fruit) microbiome is assembled, the microbial transmission between pollinator to plant, whether microbes use the flower to fruit transmission route and how this may impact the pollinator-plant-microbe interaction will be explored
Viewing the changing position of children in family leisure over time: A photographic analysis
No full textThis paper utilizes family leisure photographs to examine the changing position of children within families in New Zealand. Photographs are a useful lens for addressing such issues, as they can be interpreted as ways of understanding human life. They document aspects of lives that we may be unable to see easily via other sources. Over one hundred years of family leisure photographs, from a combination of archival family photograph albums and more recent albums sourced privately through advertising and snowball sampling, were analysed using visual qualitative thematic analysis. For analysis, a structured chronological approach was adopted to make the findings easy to follow and show the changing position of children over time. The findings show that the photographs reflect a shift away from children as observers and followers of family leisure in the early twentieth century, to controlled in the post-war years, to being recognized as important social agents through 1970s, to the position of active decision makers more recently
A meta-regression analysis of hunters’ valuations of recreational hunting
No full textHunters’ valuations of recreational hunting have been estimated by a large number of location-specific studies since the early 1970s, but to date there has been no systematic assessment of this research at the global scale. The present study performed a meta-analysis of 80 studies with 588 value-per-day estimates. The assessment showed a high concentration of studies pertaining to the valuation of deer and the valuation of hunting in the USA. The average value was USD 69 /hunting day in 2020 prices, but the variation was large, ranging from USD 4 to 325 /hunting day. The statistical performance of alternative mixed-effect models explaining the estimated value differences was tested with different hunting attributes (targeted game animal); context variables (income/capita, population density, year of study, region of application); and study characteristics (valuation method, publication outlet). The results showed that the type of game animal, income per capita, and valuation method had significant effects on estimated values. The predictive power was high for all models, supporting the application of the meta-analysis results to guide the management of hunting where primary valuation studies have not been undertaken, in particular outside the USA
Effect of pulsed electric fields on the lipidomic profile of lipid extracted from hoki fish male gonad
No full textProcessing of hoki, a commercially important fish species, generates substantial quantities of co-products, including male gonad, which contains valuable lipids, such as phospholipids, that could be recovered and utilised. Hoki fish male gonads (HMG) were subjected to pulsed electric fields (PEF) treatment at varying field strengths (0.625, 1.25, and 1.875 kV/cm) and frequencies (25, 50, and 100 Hz), at a fixed pulse width of 20 µs. The total lipid was extracted using an ethanol-hexane-based (ETHEX) extraction method, and the phospholipid and fatty acid compositions were determined using ³¹P NMR and GC-FID, respectively. The total lipid yield was increased from 4.1% to 6.7% by a relatively mild PEF pre-treatment at a field strength of 1.25 kV/cm and frequency of 50 Hz. A higher amount of EPA (8.2%), DPA (2.7%), and DHA (35.7%) were obtained by that treatment, compared to both un-heated (EPA: 8%; DPA: 2.5%; DHA: 35.2%) and heat-treated controls (EPA: 7.9%; DPA: 2.5%; DHA: 34%). No significant changes to the content of the major phospholipids were observed. PEF pre-treatment under mild conditions has potential for improving the total lipid yield extracted from fish male gonad
United Arab Emirates beef consumer consumption behaviours and product preferences: A Latent Class Analysis of New Zealand beef mince
No full textThis study is part of a research programme entitled Unlocking Export Prosperity from the Agri-food Values of Aotearoa New Zealand. It is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Endeavour Fund for science research programmes.
The research aims to provide new knowledge on how local enterprises can achieve higher returns by ensuring global consumers understand the distinctive qualities of the physical, credence and cultural attributes of agri-food products that are “Made in New Zealand”.
Agricultural exports are an important contributor to the New Zealand (NZ) economy. While NZ historically relied on key markets such as the United Kingdom for export trade, NZ has more recently significantly expanded its export markets and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offers potential to become established as an important beef product destination. It is critically important for NZ exporters to understand export markets and the different cultures and preferences of those consumers to safeguard market access, and for realising potential premiums.
This report describes the application of a survey of United Arab Emirates beef mince consumers designed to examine consumption behaviour and consumer Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for credence attributes. While search attributes such as price or colour can be observed directly, and experience attributes such as flavour can be assessed when consumed, credence attributes such as environmental sustainability cannot be immediately seen or experienced at the point of sale. For products promoting credence attributes, the role of verification including labelling is of significant importance.
Our approach is to apply a Discrete Choice Experiment economic valuation method, analysed using a statistical approach called Latent Class Modelling that describes profiles for different consumer segments identified in the data and provides estimates of attribute WTP across these segments
Westpac NZ agribusiness climate change report
No full textClimate change is an increasingly important concern, both globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Changes are already being felt in the natural environment, the economy, and communities. The agricultural sector faces risks both from a changing climate, as well as through efforts to reduce its contribution to climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
This report presents the summarised findings of research commissioned by Westpac and carried out by the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit (AERU) at Lincoln University (New Zealand), examining the physical and transition risks and opportunities presented by climate change to New Zealand’s primary sector (focusing on dairy, sheep/beef, and horticulture) to the middle of the century, as well as the sector’s vulnerabilities and potential actions to address the effects of climate change
Political ecologies of urban water governance
No full textPolitical ecological analyses of urban water governance are produced by a broad community of researchers and practitioners with the aim of transforming water-based knowledge into policies, programs, and action. This work is often underpinned by a normative commitment to exposing the uneven effects of socio-environmental change, in the hope of realigning socio-natural interactions for the broader good of human societies and natural environments. In this chapter, we point to three current areas in which political ecological analyses of urban waters provide prominent contributions. First, traditional commitments to Marxist approaches to understanding urban water have evolved into an understanding of water-related territories that extend beyond the confines of the city. Second, the materiality of water and the social relations of science intertwine to direct investment into infrastructures that realise certain visions of urban water over others. Third, urban water governance is increasingly acknowledging and attending to a plurality of water-related worlds, knowledge, and relationships, including those of Indigenous peoples. While urban political ecology may be at a current crossroads in terms of its future application, these examples illustrate how political ecological analyses of water continue to be relevant for understanding urbanisation as an ongoing process that unfolds across space
Influence of management practice on the microbiota of a critically endangered species: A longitudinal study of kākāpō chick faeces and associated nest litter
Get PDFBackground: The critically endangered kākāpō is a flightless, nocturnal parrot endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent efforts to describe the gastrointestinal microbial community of this threatened herbivore revealed a low-diversity microbiota that is often dominated by Escherichia-Shigella bacteria. Given the importance of associated microbial communities to animal health, and increasing appreciation of their potential relevance to threatened species conservation, we sought to better understand the development of this unusual gut microbiota profile. To this end, we conducted a longitudinal analysis of faecal material collected from kākāpō chicks during the 2019 breeding season, in addition to associated nest litter material.
Results: Using an experimental approach rarely seen in studies of threatened species microbiota, we evaluated the impact of a regular conservation practice on the developing kākāpō microbiota, namely the removal of faecal material from nests. Artificially removing chick faeces from nests had negligible impact on bacterial community diversity for either chicks or nests (p > 0.05). However, the gut microbiota did change significantly over time as chick age increased (p < 0.01), with an increasing relative abundance of Escherichia-Shigella coli over the study period and similar observations for the associated nest litter microbiota (p < 0.01). Supplementary feeding substantially altered gut bacterial diversity of kākāpō chicks (p < 0.01), characterised by a significant increase in Lactobacillus bacteria.
Conclusions: Overall, chick age and hand rearing conditions had the most marked impact on faecal bacterial communities. Similarly, the surrounding nest litter microbiota changed significantly over time since a kākāpō chick was first placed in the nest, though we found no evidence that removal of faecal material influenced the bacterial communities of either litter or faecal samples. Taken together, these observations will inform ongoing conservation and management of this most enigmatic of bird species