The Influence of Mobile App and Media, Towards Entomophagy Awareness and Acceptability

The speedy development of technology in the use of smartphones and their mobile applications (apps) have become momentous and influential in today’s consumer perceptions. Accordingly, the media has in recent years advocated the nutritional, environmental, and economic benefits of edible insects. However, there is still a lackluster aggressive multipronged approach to filling the awareness and acceptability gap of entomophagy through mobile apps and media. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the contribution of a developed and designed Mobile App in comparison with Other -Media Platforms in creating awareness and lack of acceptability. A total of 200 questionnaires were purposively distributed, 100 to each group and retained a 92% response rate. PLS-SEM was employed to simultaneously explain and predict the structural relationships among the (Insefood Mobile App and Other Media Platforms) and (Awareness and Acceptability). The reliability and validity of the measurement model were assessed using the four recommended procedural remedies; Factor loadings, Average Variance Extracted (AVE), Composite Reliability (CR), and Discriminant Validity. The structural model assessment and bootstrap resampling procedure was conducted to ascertain the statistical significance of path coefficients after running the PLS algorithm. The findings indicated high coefficients of determination for Insefood App, about 80% on awareness and 83% on acceptability, while Other Media Platforms’ coefficient of determination was 28% on awareness and 35% on acceptability. Predictive relevance of Insefood values 0.562 on acceptability and 0.535 on awareness, and other media platforms recorded 0.061 on acceptability and 0.081 on awareness at (p˂ 0.05). Thus, Insefood Mobile App contributed highly to awareness and acceptability than Other-Media Platforms. Affirmed the higher efficiency of the Insefood Mobile App in driving awareness and acceptability at a larger scale than Other Media Platforms. This informs the need to engage in robust and more technological yet, vigorous insect-product marketing.