An Exploratory Study for Measuring Consumers’ Perception Toward Honey Adulteration: Evidence from Tunisia

Honey consumption has increased these past years, not only for its sensory attributes, but also for its nutritional and health benefits. Therefore, honey is one of the most adulterated food products in the world, through fraudulent production practices and false labels on product origin. Besides the negative economic consequences, this food fraud impairs food safety, as well as food authenticity and quality. The present study explored consumers’ awareness and perception toward honey adulteration in a developing country study case: Tunisia. A survey was conducted in the region of Great Tunis (Tunisia) during January–March 2022, through face-to-face interviewing and an online questionnaire. It collected information on demographic data, honey consumption, awareness and attitudes toward honey adulteration, attributes used during purchase, and means of self-authentication. This study included 502 respondents (66.1% women and 33.9% men). The data obtained were analyzed using descriptive analysis. Most of respondents (93%) are honey consumers. Less than third (31.6%) was concerned by honey fraud. About 62% respondents affirmed that honey they usually purchased was not fraudulent. For their honey purchase, they relied on mainly sensory attributes (55.6%), providers’ notoriety (46.2%), product notoriety/certification (32.7%), traceability (22.9%), product price (12.0%) and packaging (6.8%), to ensure product authenticity and safety. Interestingly, respondents have developed self-protective behaviors, by checking out the product origin and provider (61.4%), by looking at the sensory attributes such as taste (34.5%), texture (28.3%), color (14.1%), and to a lesser extent, by reading product labels (14.3%). Furthermore, about 26.9% of respondents claimed to know methods to detect honey adulteration. In conclusion, this study recommended that authorities should continuously seek ways for reassurances surrounding product origin, safety and quality, and for enticing consumers to self-authenticate food products. Development of digital solutions to ensure food traceability and authenticity such as in EU PRIMA-MEDIFIT (2020–2023) project would empower consumers to self-authenticate products in food stores themselves.