Are citizens motivated to take part in participatory research in order to create sensory and consumer databases?

Participatory research engages voluntary citizens in scientific inquiry to produce new knowledge. There is a large development of participatory research in diverse domains, but only a few are developed in the food domain.

A challenge appeared since consumers are more involved in the food transition. As citizens' engagement is key for participatory research, the objective of our work was to understand citizens' familiarization and motivations to be involved in participatory research to build sensory and consumer databases.

A participatory workshop (n = 13) and an online survey (n = 500) were performed to establish an initial diagnosis of motivations and barriers contributing to participatory research about food and sensory perception.

Results revealed that citizens are unfamiliar with participatory research, 72% of participants had never heard of it, 82.8% are interested in participating, 43.4% would only do so if they were paid. The main reasons for participating in participatory research in the food sector are to: increase their knowledge (31%), curiosity (30%), have access to information on consumed products (29%), help research (24%) and acquire knowledge in nutrition (22%).

Participatory research can be a valuable way to create sensory and consumer databases if it's possible to capture citizens' motivation and attention (e.g. interactive, playful questionnaires).