Fabienne Erben
Fabienne Erben is a research associate and PhD candidate at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on promoting the consumption of legumes through consumer-oriented strategies and innovative survey methodologies, including conjoint analysis.
Fabienne studied Oecotrophology (B.Sc.) and Public Health Nutrition (M.Sc.) at the University of Applied Sciences Fulda. She is currently conducting research within the project StrahL (Target Group-Specific Strategies for Increasing Domestic Legume Consumption) at the University of Göttingen.
Her work is organized into several work packages:
- Recipe Analysis: A broad analysis of legume-based recipes to understand trends, ingredient use, and diversity.
- Online Survey: A large survey (n ≈ 1,600) with quotas ensuring approximate representativeness for Germany in terms of age, gender, education, income, and federal state. From this, dietary styles were identified, and the status quo of legume variety, consumption frequency, knowledge, drivers, and barriers was assessed.
- Practical Application: The current work package uses a discrete choice experiment to understand which attributes of legume-based dishes are most attractive to German consumers. Various combinations of recipe types, protein sources (including different legumes), and preparation characteristics (e.g., time, difficulty, price) are systematically compared. The goal is to identify the most preferred recipe profiles – combinations of attributes that consumers are most likely to choose. These findings will inform the development of everyday-appropriate legume recipes in subsequent work packages (e.g., for a Home-Use Test). This experiment is designed as an open, preference-focused investigation of culinary choices, not to promote specific meal kits or products.
Ultimately, the research aims to provide insights into how legumes can be integrated into daily diets in a practical, enjoyable, and versatile way across different dietary styles.