Our laboratory and online surveys to assess consumer’s attitudes towards pollinator-friendly plants have now been completed.

Our research team obtained roughly 200 responses from the laboratory surveys and over 1,500 responses from the surveys conducted online. Our team is in the midst of analyzing this data.

One novel piece of information being analyzed is the eye-tracking movement data. We used eye-tracking technology to understand which ‘pollinator-friendly’ plant products or labels caught people’s attention. To give an example, participants were presented images of plants with different labels, as seen in the following picture.

Six pots of hibiscus flowers with labels hanging overhead.
Sample of image presented to participants. The group of flowers is labled with the following: Hibiscus, Not Organic, Grown outside US, Pollinator friendly, Price $10.98.

After a participant interacted with this image, we received a gaze plot of where their eyesight focused, as seen below. Each blue circle shows where the participant looked, and the larger the circle, the more time the participant focused on that area.

Six pots of flowers with labels. Blue circles of different sizes are scattered throughout.
Sample of image presented to participants, with eye-tracking data overlaid with the blue circles. Each circle indicates where the participant looked, and the bigger the circle, the more amount of time the participant gazed at that spot.

As we comb over these survey responses, we hope to help garden centers understand what consumers want when it comes to plants for pollinators.

Researcher: Dr. Hayk Khachatryan

State: FL