To diversify the creative thinking of preschool education students and improve their ability to innovate and start a business, a survey of preschool education students under entrepreneurial psychology theory was conducted in this research. Based on the theoretical foundation of entrepreneurial psychology, this article analyzed the entrepreneurial psychological quality and psychological education of college students. By investigating preschool education students in a certain college in Sichuan as the research object, the author explored the current entrepreneurial intentions of college students and their entrepreneurial psychological problems. In response to the current entrepreneurial situation of college graduates, relevant countermeasures were proposed from the perspective of the school to support their entrepreneurial psychology. Among the 205 preschool education college students, the students were more willing to give full play to their professional expertise in terms of employment intentions. At the same time, there were still situations in which students were dissatisfied with the prospects of preschool education career development and wanted to achieve the value of life through other approaches. Most students in preschool education had a wait-and-see attitude toward entrepreneurship. Only 35% of students had a clear intention to start a business and made their plans for entrepreneurship. More than 90% of students held that they had developed inadequate entrepreneurial ability, and 80% of students believed that they lacked the required professional knowledge. These two factors constitute the main reasons for students’ negative attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, colleges may stimulate the potential of students’ self-development through the improvement of entrepreneurial psychological education courses, the construction of psychological consultation institutions on campus, and the establishment of interactive platforms for entrepreneurship. In this way, students’ entrepreneurial psychology can be cultivated in an all-round way. Therefore, to deal with the weak overall entrepreneurial consciousness of college students, the colleges should cultivate entrepreneurial innovative talents by strengthening the psychological education of entrepreneurship for students, and help college students achieve entrepreneurial success. The choice of college students to start their own businesses is of great strategic significance to solve the employment issue in China. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has also reiterated that the core of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” lies in stimulating the creativity of people, especially in stimulating the creativity of young people . EmploymEntrepreneurial psychology is a special psychological phenomenon manifested during the course of entrepreneurial behavior, that is, the mental state of the entrepreneur’s regulation and dominance of entrepreneurial behavior in entrepreneurial activities. In the process of entrepreneurship, college students can give full play to their subjective initiative and creativity, reflect their entrepreneurial ability, and ultimately realize the value of life. From a psychological perspective, ability is one of the important factors of individual psychological phenomena. Individual ability, individual cognition, and individual emotion are interdependent and together form a person’s psychology. In the process of starting a business for college students, there is no doubt that they must face pressure from various parties, such as lack of experience, interpersonal limitations, and shortage of funds. Therefore, college entrepreneurs must be able to maintain stress resistance at all times to face difficulties and unknown risks in the process of entrepreneurship . Only byIn the era of vigorous development of college students’ mass entrepreneurship and innovation, preschool education, as the basis of the entire education system, plays an important role in cultivating students’ innovation and entrepreneurship ability in personal development and social progress. In summary, this article analyzes the entrepreneurial psychological quality and entrepreneurial psychological education of college students from the perspective of entrepreneurial psychology. By taking preschool education students in one college in Jiangsu as the research object, this article investigates the current entrepreneurial intentions of college students. The entrepreneurial psychological problems existing in college students are analyzed and the corresponding psychological support suggestions are proposed to disperse the creative thinking of preschool education students and enhance their innovative and entrepreneurial ability.Maslow believes that everyone has a tendency to pursue self-realization and engage in creative behavior. Psychologist Williams believes that people with creative tendencies have the four characteristics of curiosity, imagination, challenge, and adventure. Some scholars in China believe that the creative tendency is the creative personality, which means that people have a positive psychological tendency toward creative activities, which is an important part of creativity . Some stEmotion is a kind of psychological experience, which reflects the relationship between the individual and other things. In this relationship, the individual’s needs are used as an intermediary. If entrepreneurship can meet the needs of college students, a positive emotional experience will be produced, which will promote entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship does not meet the needs of college students, a disgusted emotional experience will be produced, which undoubtedly has a negative effect on college students’ entrepreneurial behavior . ResearcIn summary, regarding the entrepreneurial issues of college students, the academic community has explored from the perspectives of entrepreneurial emotions. The research angle and the emphasis are different. According to the existing research, for current entrepreneurial activities of college students, entrepreneurial psychological quality is an important factor in determining entrepreneurial behavior in terms of cognition, emotion, will and tendency . At presAt present, China’s college education is expanding and the number of college graduates is increasing year by year. It is expected that the number of college graduates will reach a record high in 2020, reaching 8.74 million. In contrast, China’s economic and cultural development has entered a new normal, and the rapid development of the market economy has made society’s demand for labor less and less. It is followed by great employment pressure in the whole society. It is also the reason why many college students embark on the path of self-employment. In the past 5 years, the proportion of Chinese college students’ entrepreneurship has steadily increased. Nearly 40% of college graduates who choose to start a business have a rural family background. Education and retail sectors are their main fields of entrepreneurship. The proportion of self-employment in undergraduates and vocational students increased from 1.2 and 2.9% in 2012 to 2.1 and 3.9% in 2016. The vast majority of graduates who choose to start their businesses are “opportunistic entrepreneurship,” that is, to start a business to seize and use market opportunities. A few belong to “survival entrepreneurship,” that is, to start a business due to failure in finding suitable jobs. The specific situation of undergraduates and vocational students choosing self-employment is shown in status quo and are not superstitious about authority. Thus, they generally have innovative psychology. Human psychology mainly includes consciousness, will, ability, and personality. From the perspective of psychology, entrepreneurial psychology is in a special state, which refers to a psychological phenomenon manifested by entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial behavior. The entrepreneurial psychology will regulate and control entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurship is a process full of unknowns and challenges. Especially for college students, they are relatively inadequate in terms of capital reserves, market control, and experience accumulation. Therefore, it is important to maintain a stable psychological mood. In the background of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation,” the difficult entrepreneurial process has higher requirements for the psychological qualities of entrepreneurs. College students must have entrepreneurial professional abilities and stress resistance to deal with entrepreneurial setbacks and difficulties, thereby improving mental capacity to accept unknown challenges. From the perspective of psychological constituents, college students need to constantly update the entrepreneurial cognition, maintain a stable entrepreneurial mood, and ensure that the entrepreneurial will is unshakable during the entrepreneurial process. In this way, they can continuously improve their ability and make entrepreneurial behavior successful.As entrepreneurs, they usually have the characteristics of divergent thinking; they are dissatisfied with the A special psychological state reflected in entrepreneurial behavior is that entrepreneurial cognition is the basis for individuals to start entrepreneurial behaviors. At the same time, entrepreneurial behavior and language are jointly regulated by various psychological factors such as emotions, will, ability and personality. Entrepreneurial emotion can promote the development of entrepreneurial behavior. The entrepreneurial will, as the cornerstone of the entire entrepreneurial behavior, ultimately promotes the achievement of goals . For colEntrepreneurial psychological education for college students is the key to implementing entrepreneurship education. The entrepreneurial psychological education of Chinese colleges is still in the initial stage of development. In combination with China’s economic and political development line, in the process of psychological education for college entrepreneurs, it is necessary to grasp “Chinese characteristics” and draw lessons from overseas relatively mature entrepreneurial psychological education for college students. Then, a mode suitable for college students’ entrepreneurial psychological education can be explored in China.College students’ entrepreneurial psychological quality is one of the necessary conditions for entrepreneurs, and it plays an important role in ensuring the success of college students’ entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur’s success is the result of a combination of factors. Psychological quality has an important impact on entrepreneurial success, and it is a firm belief that supports entrepreneurs’ aggressiveness and success . In the The personality characteristics of entrepreneurs are the sum of the essential and stable psychological characteristics embodied by the entrepreneurs. It is the embodiment of the entrepreneur’s mental outlook. The personality characteristics of entrepreneurs deeply affect the whole process of entrepreneurs’ specific entrepreneurial behaviors, and they are the essential psychological qualities of entrepreneurs to achieve successful entrepreneurship. First, self-confidence is the basic factor that affects the success of entrepreneurs and is also a prerequisite for the formation and development of other personality characteristics. It plays a decisive role in many other aspects of good psychological quality. Second, the independent spirit is the first psychological quality that entrepreneurs should possess. Entrepreneurs can make their judgments decisively without being influenced by the complex external environment. At the same time, they should be good at cooperating with others to realize the optimization and integration of resources, thereby creating a win-win harmony and achieving entrepreneurial success. Third, firm will and keen judgment are the psychological qualities that entrepreneurs must possess. Entrepreneurs must be able to stick to their beliefs, find the causes of problems and find solutions to them, thereby turning crises into opportunities. Fourth is the spirit of adventure, innovation, and responsibility.Entrepreneurial motivation is the idea of conducting behavioral activities to meet the needs of the realization of personal value, and it is also the internal reason and motivation to encourage entrepreneurs to achieve their goals . For colPreschool Education Employment Intention Survey was compiled. Among them, there were 6 questions in career attitude and 2 questions in entrepreneurial intention. The Likert scale was used to measure the survey subjects, and the results were five categorical variables: 1–5 scores indicate “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “not necessarily,” “agree,” and “strongly agree” on the content of the statement, respectively (Research Object: In this study, the preschool education students from a college in Sichuan as the research object were selected to conduct a questionnaire survey. Also, 212 students in the senior grade of the major were selected to issue questionnaires to understand the college students’ entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial psychological quality. The questionnaire of this research was based on the theory of entrepreneurship of college students. Under the reference and summary of the existing questionnaires about the employment intention of preschool education graduates, the questionnaire of the ectively . Reliabit-test was performed.A total of 212 questionnaires were distributed in this survey, and 209 were recovered, of which 205 were valid questionnaires, and the effective recovery rate was 96.7%. SPSS 24.0 was used to perform descriptive statistics on the test samples, and the independent sample Of the 205 preschool education students surveyed, 7 are males and 198 are females. A total of 73 students were born in cities and 132 in rural areas. Besides, the parents of 17 students are civil servants in public institutions, the parents of 6 students are enterprise workers, 21 are self-employed, 126 are farmers working at home, and 35 are other occupations. Descriptive analysis and statistical results of the career attitudes of preschool education students in this study are shown in About the survey of students’ entrepreneurial intentions, this article involves two questions. The first question is “I will start a business after graduation” and the second question is “If the time is mature after graduation, I will consider starting a business.” The survey results are shown in In the questionnaire, a multiple-choice question was designed: If choosing to start a business after graduation, what do you think you need to improve yourself, including five options of entrepreneurial consciousness, entrepreneurial ability, entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial will, and entrepreneurial emotion. The survey results are shown in The survey results show that more than 90% of students believe that their entrepreneurial ability is weak, which is also the highest proportion of all entrepreneurial qualities that need to be strengthened. It also means that the most significant one of the entrepreneurial psychological problems of college students is that entrepreneurial ability is relatively low. At present, there are fewer successful cases of overall entrepreneurship for college students in China. It has a lot to do with the lack of external abilities. Entrepreneurs are less able to withstand stress and resolve the crisis when they encounter difficulties. Fresh graduates will be more confused and caught off guard, and they are eager to escape and give up, eventually leading to entrepreneurial failure. Then, 80% of students believe that their professional knowledge is lacking, and knowledge can directly promote people’s behavioral decisions. Entrepreneurs must have comprehensive entrepreneurial knowledge, including operations, finance, law, and market economy, to ensure that the entire entrepreneurial behavior is carried out in accordance with the correct plan.It is found in the analysis of the entrepreneurial psychological problems of college students that the instability of entrepreneurship is also an important factor affecting the entrepreneurial intention. The will of human has the characteristics of consciousness, decisiveness, and tenacity. It is an excellent psychological quality for people to carry out activities, regulate behaviors, and finally realize their ideals. At present, college entrepreneurs in China are generally mentally unstable, usually short-tempered and impatient, easily leading to the failure of entrepreneurship and difficulty in forming an inertial abandonment thinking.The survey also finds that students have entrepreneurial psychological problems such as weak entrepreneurial consciousness and entrepreneurial emotion. The traditional employment survival consciousness has a profound impact on the entrepreneurial consciousness of college graduates. At present, most college students still have a dependence on the state management institution. Entrepreneurial consciousness, as a new idea in the new era, will promote entrepreneurial behavior. The root cause of entrepreneurial psychological problems among college students is the lack of entrepreneurial consciousness. Due to the lack of entrepreneurial motivation, ideals, and beliefs of modern college students, entrepreneurial emotion is not strong. A large proportion of college entrepreneurs are impulsive entrepreneurs, and they can continue to struggle in favorable circumstances. However, when they encounter setbacks, they mostly choose to escape due to a lack of entrepreneurial emotional support, resulting in failure to achieve personal value and entrepreneurial ideals.Improving college students’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm and stimulating entrepreneurial consciousness are important directions for colleges to cultivate students’ innovative entrepreneurial thinking. Colleges should take self-construction as the starting point, and propose relevant psychological support countermeasures against their entrepreneurial psychological problems. Entrepreneurship psychological support mainly includes three aspects: offering psychological education courses, setting up psychological consultation institutions, and building an interactive platform for entrepreneurship, as shown in At present, China’s colleges have offered entrepreneurship-related courses that mainly provide college students with entrepreneurial-related knowledge. However, there is little education related to entrepreneurial psychology for students, and it is thus necessary to provide relevant courses on campus to enable students with entrepreneurial ideas to master the basic common sense related to entrepreneurial psychology, thereby improving the entrepreneurial quality of the students in this part. Then, to address the psychological contradictions generated by college entrepreneurs in the process of entrepreneurship, special counseling can be conducted through the construction of psychological consultation institutions on campus. Psychological consultation institutions are mainly to help college entrepreneurs to relieve stress, find potential psychological problems and solve existing psychological obstacles. For college students, they can offer psychological security. Finally, a more meaningful measure is to build an interactive platform for entrepreneurship to help college students communicate entrepreneurial information through WeChat, Weibo, and other platforms. In this way, the doubts and difficulties can be resolved in the process of entrepreneurship, thereby creating a good entrepreneurial communication atmosphere.China has entered a new normal of economic and social development. The government has also issued relevant policy support to college students with entrepreneurial intentions and abilities. Entrepreneurship, as a systematic project, involves many aspects such as entrepreneurial consciousness, entrepreneurial ability, and policy support. A series of problems that arise during the entrepreneurial process are also a comprehensive test of the psychological qualities of entrepreneurs . In the Based on the theoretical basis of entrepreneurial psychology, the entrepreneurial psychological quality and psychological education of college students are analyzed in this study. By investigating preschool education students in one college in Sichuan as the research object, this article explores the current entrepreneurial intentions of college students and their entrepreneurial psychological problems . Among tAs for colleges, it is necessary to carry out entrepreneurial psychological education for students, and teach students the necessary skills to start a business and how to strengthen their entrepreneurial consciousness . CollegeThis article further analyzes and promotes the theoretical research and practical value of entrepreneurial psychological education for college students. It constructs a complete methods and strategies for the internal knowledge system and external environment intervention of college students’ entrepreneurial psychological education. It provides a theoretical basis for how to further develop college students’ entrepreneurial psychological education in China’s higher education. This article comprehensively analyzed the concepts of entrepreneurial learning, personality traits and entrepreneurial intentions, as well as studies related theories. Also, the general characteristics and influencing factors of employment intention of preschool education graduates were discussed. The theory of planned behavior was used to analyze the reasons for the employment intention of pre-school education graduates . Self-emThe raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Wenzhou Medical University Ethics Committee. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Persistently low employment of women in some countries can still be ascribed to a traditional perception of women’s role in society. According to observed data and prevailing social and cultural norms, women have been bearing the primary burdens of housework, childcare, and other family responsibilities. The unequal share of care responsibilities between women and men further worsens the disadvantages of women in balancing public and private life, with an impact on their employment and health outcomes. In this paper we investigate the role of family responsibilities in shaping employment and health outcomes by gender, in Italy and France, during and after the economic downturn. We use data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for the time windows of 2007–2010 and 2011–2014. Our results support that gender differences in the share of responsibilities roles in the public and private sphere influence the employability and health perception of women. The debate on the relationship between health and labor market outcomes dates back to the seminal work of Grossman , based oWorldwide gender participation inequities exist in many fields , women spend more time in work than men, which has an impact on their health status ,4When we consider both social policy preferences and fertility rates, the differences are even more evident . Regarding gender allocation of parental leaves, the differences between France and Italy are quite clear. In 2019, both countries had 25 weeks available for maternity and paternity leave in full-rate equivalent weeks . However, in France this consisted of 19 full-rate equivalent weeks for maternity leave and 5 for paternity leave, whereas in Italy, 25 weeks were for women and five days were for men , reaffirmed by the EU 2020 Strategy, has been attained in both countries. France increased coverage from 44% (2011) to 49% (2016) and Italy from 25% to 35% during the same period, although both countries suffered a temporary reduction during the economic downturn. As recently as 2017, despite increased coverage, a difference in the availability of childcare services existed, which may be attributed to the different attitudes of the two countries. A lack of childcare facilities, in fact, determines to a great extent whether women with children continue to work after maternity leave ends . The public provision of family services is then influenced by these previously established social institutions. A lack of care services and measures has been widely recognized as one of the more persistent obstacles to the equalization of shared family care responsibilities  separately on employment and health highlight a gap in research on their simultaneous effects. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive and comparative analysis of three important phenomena  between Italy and France.cmp .We simultaneously estimated two binary (probit) regression models for the probability of being employed and having a good health status by gender in Italy and France, for individuals between 25 and 64 years of age for the period 2007–2010 and 2011–2014, during and after the crisis, respectively. The choice of binary regression models allows obtaining a simplified and convenient representation of employment probabilities for both women and men, as well as the probability of good health. The dependent variable for employment was The probit model used to estimate the employment equation was derived from a latent continuous variable  are the primary sampling units (PSUs), while households are the secondary sampling units (SSUs). The PSUs are divided into strata according to their population size, and the SSUs are selected by systematic sampling in each PSU. Our analysis considers the longitudinal sample of individuals interviewed in all four successive waves that took place in the two periods mentioned.Our samples included people between 25 and 64 years of age. In order to avoid confusion over education enrollment and early retirement issues, we excluded from our analysis individuals under the age of 25 years and over the age of 64 years. As a robustness check, we also excluded individuals aged 60 and over from our samples (to completely avoid early retirement decisions), but the results remained basically the same , and we therefore retained the conventional 64 years of age as the upper limit of our age range. We dropped individuals with missing values for some variables in our samples by country, time period, and gender. Considering both the non-employed and the employed in the age range examined, for Italy 9373 (7688) female and 9000  male observations remain for the period of 2007–2010 (2011–2014) and for France, 12,592  female and 11,172  male observations remain.Tables 1 for good/very good health and 0 for bad/very bad health or chronic disease.6The dependent variable for the health equation was the perceived health status (variable PH020 in the EU-SILC code). It was a dummy indicator that equalled The overall age range considered [25–64] was divided into four dummy variables for the age brackets  as these different age ranges were characterized by different employment probabilities as well as different health statuses and different burdens of responsibility.Given that education plays an important role on employment probabilities as well as on health status Bratti , we intrThe socioeconomic environment may have an impact both on employment probability and on health status . First, family care responsibilities referred to the presence of children in the household. We included an indicator for the presence of children aged between 0 and 6 in our analyses. The data offered the opportunity to distinguish between different age classes of children, and we chose the  range because this age class tacitly implies the highest intensity of caring activities  and the increase in unemployment . The use of AMEs allowed an interpretation of the effects in percentage terms. Moreover, we carried out specific tests for the equality of AMEs during and after the economic downturn. Those that were statistically different from one period to the other are bolded. All estimates were weighted by using the longitudinal weights provided by the EU-SILC survey (variable RB060 in the EU-SILC code). In the next subsections, we report and comment on the effect of the regressors described above in the Variables section . Specifically, we found higher discrepancies between relatively younger women (between 25 and 34 years of age) and relatively older women (between 55 and 64 years of age) compared to (corresponding) differences between younger and older men. Age is therefore a crucial factor when analysing female employment probabilities.Employment probabilities were positively associated with education in both countries. Interestingly, in Italy we found that female employment was more affected by education than was male employment. The positive role of education for women was supported by similar studies on Italian female labor force participation , while probabilities for men were positively associated with marriage .Moving on to caring responsibilities, the presence of children aged between 0 and 6 years reduced the employment probability of women, especially during the economic downturn and in France, where we noted a significantly different effect of the presence of children during and after the downturn . Male employment probabilities were instead positively associated with the presence of children in both countries. This difference in sign for the impact of the presence of children between genders, and especially the negative effect on the employability of women, is supported by the existing literature , the joint effect of the two indicators on employment by using interaction variables.The presence of persons with disabilities in the household (with some or strong activity limitations) negatively affected employment probabilities in both countries. Specifically, the impact was higher for men compared to women, especially in France. This is supported by the existing literature on the indirect employment effects of disability, and specifically, the effects of the presence of a cohabiting individual with a disability on the employment probabilities of the other household members  discussed above, as women are primarily responsible for family care while men are primarily responsible for paid labor market activity.To sum up, the estimates suggest that family care responsibilities negatively and significantly affected employment probabilities, especially for women, and the effect only slightly changed immediately after the economic downturn. Our findings are in line with similar previous work examining the effect of caring activities on labor force participation and employment in Italy and France  unemployment rate (used for identification purposes) reduced employment probabilities, and this was in line with expectations. The reduction was even more important after the economic downturn.The AMEs of the probit model for the health status of Italian and French women and men are reported in Tables We noted similarities across countries for the individual/household characteristics positively affecting the health status of women and men. Being younger, highly educated (secondary), married and living in a larger household positively affected one’s health status. The relevance and signs were maintained, and most of them were even stronger after the crisis , while the impact was positive for French women both during and after the crisis . There was no association between the presence of children in the household and men’s health. The presence of cohabiting older persons without disability did not affect health in Italy, while it exerted a positive impact on the health of both men and women in France, thus deserving further research into possible explanations. Caring for persons with a disability, whether with some or a strong limitation in activities, negatively affected the health of women and men in both time periods  suggested that confounding factors, such as individual motivations, preferences and attitudes, increased the employment probability of women and negatively affected health status. For instance, motivations, preferences and good attitudes towards work might increase the labor market participation of women, and this might cause a deterioration in their health status because women must also bear stress and fatigue due to other care responsibilities. On the other hand, the positive sign of the rho parameters for men in Italy, and especially in France, suggested that the mentioned confounding factors that increase the employment probability also positively affected health status. These gender differences in attitudes reflect social and cultural norms, which constrain women to bear the primary burdens of housework, childcare and other family responsibilities. These family-care activities, combined with paid work, unavoidably cause stress and deteriorate women’s health. For men, instead, paid work is associated with improved health because they do less unpaid caring activities and thus don't experience the stress of having to do this work and their paid work. It is therefore essential to consider endogeneity, and our results confirm the adequacy and appropriateness of the model strategy adopted.According to our findings from both the employment equation and the health status analysis, family care responsibilities negatively affected not only the employment probability, but also (and significantly) the perceived health status  of women. Our estimation results also revealed that employment was endogenous in the health equation. The estimated –work conciliation issues.In all industrialized countries, the labor force participation rate of women has increased rapidly over the past decades. Nonetheless, it continues to stand well below that of men. Moreover, women in most countries continue to have a discontinuous pattern of employment over their life course, resulting in substantial income loss and more stress from familyIn order to capture the relationship between employment, family care responsibilities and health outcomes for women , in this work we simultaneously analysed employment probabilities and health status by gender in Italy and France. We find that employment, especially for women, is negatively associated with family care responsibilities, such as the presence of children aged between 0 and 6 years in the household, as well as elderly persons and persons with some or strong disabilities. The effect on women and men’s employment probabilities only changes slightly after the economic downturn.Summing up the analyses we ran for the two countries, we note that employment probabilities are positively associated with education in both countries. Interestingly, especially women’s employment in Italy benefits from higher education. We also interpret this as a possible strong channel of reversing the cultural norms and socio-institutional barriers that we found can account for a big difference between two countries’ societies and economies. This interpretation is supported by the finding that the presence of children as well as older persons still has a negative impact on the employment performance of women in both countries, implying that the trade-off is entirely on women’s shoulders, while having the effect of promoting employability for men in Italy and France.The findings offer strong support for several interventions to help families in the division of family responsibilities, especially if we consider the effect that such intervention exerts on both employment probability and health. Interestingly, we find that the presence of children positively affects health for French women . In addition, interestingly, the presence of children has no impact on men’s health. The presence of older persons, instead, negatively affects the employment probabilities of both genders. A further family responsibility, that is, the presence of people with disabilities, has a negative impact on both of the studied phenomena, suggesting that extra effort is needed in implementing measures aimed at helping families with members with disabilities in both countries.The increased availability of specific variables, such as information on partners as well as local availability of childcare services, that we identify as a limitation to our research, could be helpful in developing future research possibilities. These might include also longitudinal studies and, with the availability of the information mentioned, would allow improving the knowledge of the effect of both informal and formal care on employment and health of both women and men.The need for this line of research becomes even more evident as a result of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, where family responsibilities have fallen even more heavily on women. Recently issued statistical data highlighted the reduction of labor supply and the increase of physical and mental stress UN . In a fu


The modern slavery literature engages with history in an extremely limited fashion. Our paper demonstrates to the utility of historical research to modern slavery researchers by explaining the rise and fall of the ethics-driven market category of “free-grown sugar” in nineteenth-century Britain. In the first decades of the century, the market category of “free-grown sugar” enabled consumers who were opposed to slavery to pay a premium for a more ethical product. After circa 1840, this market category disappeared, even though considerable quantities of slave-grown sugar continued to arrive into the UK. We explain the disappearance of the market category. Our paper contributes to the on-going debates about slavery in management by historicizing and thus problematizing the concept of “slavery”. The paper challenges those modern slavery scholars who argue that lack of consumer knowledge about product provenance is the main barrier to the elimination of slavery from today’s international supply chains. The historical research presented in this paper suggests that consumer indifference, rather than simply ignorance, may be the more fundamental problem. The paper challenges the optimistic historical metanarrative that pervades much of the research on ethical consumption. It highlights the fragility of ethics-driven market categories, offering lessons for researchers and practitioners seeking to tackle modern slavery. Over the last 15 years, social activists have succeeded in raising awareness of the existence of slavery and in forcing governments and firms into tackling this problem Murphy . The vicethics-driven market category. We then apply this concept to the British sugar trade in the historical period in which the legitimacy of slavery was being contested by activists. In the 1790 s, a small group of British entrepreneurs with ties to the East India Company created a new market category, “free-grown sugar”. This market category appealed to British consumers who supported the new anti-slavery movement and who did not want to support the institution of slavery by purchasing sugar from the West Indies. From the 1790s to the 1830s, UK retailers offered consumers the choice between slave-produced and non-slave sugar products. During this period, significant numbers of British consumers paid a premium for sugar that was marketed as being produced without slave labour. After 1840, the ethics-driven market category of free-grown sugar vanished from Britain, even though the country continued to import vast quantities of slave-produced sugar, especially after controversial tariff modifications in 1846 the made it easier to import sugar from jurisdictions such as Cuba and Brazil in which was slavery was legal until the 1880s.To help us to understand the historical phenomena discussed in our paper, we draw on business ethics literature to develop the concept of the Our paper contributes to the on-going debates in management about slavery by historicizing and thus problematizing the concept of “slavery” and showing that its boundaries have long been contested. The paper challenges those modern slavery scholars who argue that lack of consumer knowledge about product provenance is the main barrier to the elimination of slavery from international supply chains by arguing that consumer indifference, rather than simply ignorance, may be the more fundamental problem. The paper integrates factors such as race and ethnicity into our understanding of how consumers think about slavery, which implies that modern slavery scholars should examine these variables. The paper challenges the optimistic historical metanarrative that pervades much of the research on ethical consumption and thus reminds modern slavery researchers, of the utility of incorporating historical research into their analysis of modern forms of slavery.modern slavery came into widespread use by academics concerned with the continued existence of various forms of highly unfree labour , actors are more likely to be punished for deviating from categories than if the relevant categories are fuzzy. Durand and Khaire . In our case study, we document a process of moralisation and demoralization.Trentmann  is a rarevaluating, explicating, conceptualizing, and narrating. Using a distinction first made by Fogel and Elton  is useful in identifying the role of contingency, while theoretical fluency  is crucial in making and producing new constructs.Maclean et al. argue that high-quality research in historical organization studies has the following hallmarks: reflexive historical case study (RHCS). Their approach, which is informed by the work of the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, is designed to allow researchers to contribute to the development of theory. Stutz and Sachs call on researchers to pay more attention to both their own social contexts and, crucially, the social and historical contexts of their case studies. Stutz and Sachs argue that the approach exemplified by Eisenhardt encourages researchers to unnecessarily “uproot” and decontextualize their case study research. We wholeheartedly agree with their view that case study research in management ought to pay more attention to political, social, and economic context.This paper draws on the work of Maclean et al. . Our appIn an important paper on historical embeddedness, Vaara and Lamberg , p. 634 We have sought to adhere to all of the five principles identified by Maclean et al. , particuAcademic Search Complete database to produce a comprehensive list of all of the secondary sources that might be relevant to our project.  and list of historical actors related to our project. Armed with these lists, we were able to begin our research using primary sources.Times, which is keyword searchable back to 1785, the Manchester Guardian, and a range of other contemporary newspapers from communities throughout the British Isles. Using the chronology and list of names discussed above, we methodically searched these databases for newspaper articles that dealt with competition between free-grown and slave-produced sugar in the British market. Our searches of newspapers included advertisements as well as editorial content. We also searched the digitized transcripts of debates in the British parliament, which covers the period from 1803, and a database of parliamentary papers, which includes a range of government reports. Our keyword searches used the terms “slave-grown sugar” and “free-grown sugar”, the common nineteenth-century terms. We also searched for “free-labour sugar,” a term used by some contemporaries that had the same meaning as “free-grown sugar.”In recent years, many nineteenth-century British publications have been digitized, indexed, and rendered keyword searchable. These publications include the London Quantitative data related to the creation of the ethics-driven market category of free-grown sugar in the past is necessarily more limited than if we were observing contemporary market category formation. For instance, we lack access to market research reports that would allow us to establish, with confidence, what precise share of the sugar consumed by the UK population in, say, 1870 had been produced with slave labour. However, for part of the period covered by our study we have proxy data in the form of the UK’s annual trade statistics published. These statistical tables, which aggregated data collected at ports of entry across the British Isles, allow us to determine what proportion of the country’s sugar came from a particular country. Since the secondary literature Davis  tells usWe took active steps during our analytical process to limit the extent to which these subjective biases might distort our data analysis. The literature on inductive and abductive research methods  may be the major barrier to getting consumers to act against slavery. As noted above, Christ and Burritt  found thThird, we have argued above that intensifying racism after 1840 contributed to consumer indifference about whether their sugar was produced by slaves. We presented evidence that a number of trends in British culture contributed to the growing perception in Britain that people of African descent were inferior and almost a separate biological species. In effect, the de-humanization and Otherization of African people contributed to the demise of the market category of free-labour sugar by encouraging consumer indifference to the question of the sugar had been produced by slaves. Although supply chains can, in theory, link consumers to slaves who are of the same race and ethnic origins, slavery, whether historic or in the present, often involves the exploitation of individuals who are racially or ethnically different than the beneficiaries of their labour. Modern slavery scholars may wish to consider whether the rise of xenophobic, racist, or nationalist modes of thought may make it more difficult to get consumers to be concerned about the issue of slavery and then act on those concerns.The fourth major contribution of our paper will be of interest to both consumption ethics scholars and modern slavery researchers. As we pointed out in our literature review, the research in management on consumer ethics is informed by a historical metanarrative that holds that there is a natural tendency for each generation of consumers to become more interested in ethical issues. This optimistic historical metanarrative links technological progress and rising living standards to consumers’ increasing interest in ethics. Our historical research calls into question the theory of linear moral progress that influences how many business ethics researchers understand consumption ethics. As we show, the market category of free-grown sugar disappeared from the British market after several decades of existence. In the 1780s and 1790s, anti-slavery activists made the consumption of sugar an ethical question in British culture for the first time. After 1792, a proportion of British sugar buyers insisted that the sugar served in their households had to be unconnected to slavery. After the 1840s, however, the commodity became demoralized and a (re)silencing phase began. The market category of free-grown sugar did not re-appear in the period between 1846 and 1880, which suggests that few if any consumers of this era had moral qualms about consuming sugar produced by slaves, even though sources of free-grown sugar were readily available.The disappearance of the market category of free-labour sugar is remarkable when we remember that the UK’s GDP per capita rose dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century. In 1801, the earliest year in our period for which GDP per capita estimates are available, UK GDP per capita was US$2,300 in 2017 values, which implies that living standards in the UK were similar to those in present-day Uganda, Benin, and Zimbabwe. Despite the poverty of the average British person in this era, the country had developed the market category of free-grown sugar. By 1860, UK GDP per capita was $3,900, a considerable improvement over the 1801 level, yet the market category had disappeared. Up until the 1880s, the UK imported large quantities of slave-grown sugar. The average British person in 1880 was considerably better off than they had been in 1820 yet consumers in the latter years did not display the same willingness to pay more for free-grown sugar that many in a comparatively poor generation had displayed in the 1820s. The relationship between increasing living standards and consumer concern about the ethics of using the products of slave labour would therefore appear to be non-linear, challenging some existing work on ethical consumption  rather than the voluntary efforts of the British consumers who purchased free-labour sugar. By 1890, slavery had disappeared from all of the regions in the New World that supplied Britain’s sugar and in every case slavery was terminated by state action, not consumer sentiment working through market forces. Our research thus suggests that while participating in the creation of ethics-driven market categories may help at the margin to address present-day ethical issues in business, such as modern slavery, campaigning for state action may be more effective. This finding is relevant to debates around the effectiveness of current legislation covering modern slavery. Some national governments, such as the UK and Australia, have engaged in a process of ‘outsourcing governance’ (Mayer and Phillips Slavery remains a pressing social issue that justly occupies the attention of a range of policymakers and academics. As Hathaway , p. 7 re


Wild food plants (WFPs) are often highly nutritious but under-consumed at the same time. This study aimed to document the diversity of WFPs, and assess perceptions, attitudes, and drivers of change in their consumption among Minangkabau and Mandailing women farmers in West Sumatra. We applied a mixed-method approach consisting of interviews with 200 women and focus group discussions with 68 participants. The study documented 106 WFPs (85 species), and Minangkabau were found to steward richer traditional knowledge than Mandailing. Although both communities perceived WFPs positively, consumption has declined over the last generation. The main reasons perceived by respondents were due to the decreased availability of WFPs and changes in lifestyle. The contemporary barriers to consuming WFPs were low availability, time constraints, and a limited knowledge of their nutritional value. The key motivations for their use were that they are free and “unpolluted” natural foods. The main drivers of change were socio-economic factors and changes in agriculture and markets. However, the persistence of a strong culture appears to slow dietary changes. The communities, government and NGOs should work together to optimize the use of this food biodiversity in a sustainable way. This integrated approach could improve nutrition while conserving biological and cultural diversity. Although the current global food system is believed to be capable of providing enough calories for the world, there are still around two billion people who experience hunger or do not have access to a nutritious diet . An incrWild food plants (WFPs) have been part of diets and traditional food systems throughout human history, providing important nutrients and bioactive compounds. Ancestral and contemporary traditional diets are known to offer valuable health benefits . There aDespite their potential benefits, WFPs have been overlooked and excluded from most formal education, policies and research or development programs. The barriers to a greater use of WFPs were reviewed by , with thCurrently, numerous drivers are accelerating the decline in biodiversity and the use of WFPs, such as changes in land-use, climate change, agriculture intensification, overharvesting, socio-economic change, expansion of markets and the loss of local knowledge ,22.http://proseanet.org/prosea/) series, Indonesia is rich in wild and cultivated foods, but the country is losing its forests and biodiversity at a tremendous rate [In Indonesia, one of the most bioculturally diverse countries in the world, foods and diets vary along with geographical, socio-economic and cultural diversity . Food inous rate  and littIn West Sumatra, local communities maintain a relatively diverse diet with a prevalence of traditional foods ,30. But The objectives of this study were: (1) to document and assess the local knowledge on WFPs of the Minangkabau and Mandailing communities; (2) to understand the perceptions and attitudes on WFPs; and (3) to explain the reasons for changes in the use of WFPs along with the drivers of these changes.2 divided into 12 regencies [Morus macroura), or endemic orchids. Tropical forests that in the past dominated the area are restricted to mostly protected areas and only a few customary forests, “hutan adat”. The province is dominated by a mosaic landscape which has been maintained by traditional land management based on the strong relationship between the Minangkabau people and their land. The core of local land-use systems is based on the cultivation of wet rice and agroforestry systems dominated by trees [West Sumatra province lies in the range of the Bukit Barisan Mountains, with the western part aligned with the Indian Ocean. The province has an area size of about 42,297.30 kmegencies . The regegencies . The areby trees . Rice fiby trees . The mosby trees .From a cultural perspective, the region is dominated by the Minangkabau ethnic group and to a lesser extent by the Mandailing ethnic group, which is more populous in North Sumatra . The stuMandailing people had initially been a Batak sub-ethnic grow and were Christians until the 19th century when they converted to Islam and started to adopt elements of Minangkabau culture. In contrast to the Minang culture, they adhere to the patrilineal heritage system, and maintain their Mandailing language. The Mandailing community is often described as a hardworking agricultural society with indigenous traditions and community governance . Their wThis study is a part of the broader Food, Agrobiodiversity and Diet (FAD) project which aimed to improve the food and nutrition security of the Minangkabau and Mandailing communities in the Pasaman regency by promoting the use of agrobiodiversity and traditional foods. The project was approved by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (RISTEK). The methodology was further reviewed by the ethical committee of the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta, and ethical clearance was obtained (No. protocol 18-03-0291). The research followed the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology and all informants were familiarized with the research objectives, methods and expected results. The free prior informed consent was obtained in a written form from all the individual respondents or their spouses. The data were interpreted anonymously. The project was aligned with the goals and policy of the Indonesian National Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2015–2019, in particular with a key strategy (c) to improve the quality and nutritional value of the Indonesian diet.Having improved nutrition as an ultimate goal, our sampling targeted women at reproductive age (15–49 years old), as women represent a group vulnerable to malnutrition . A stratIndividual semi-structured interviews using questionnaires were conducted by trained data enumerators supervised by the principal investigator. The interviews started with capturing socio-economic characteristics, including questions for Progress out of Poverty Index for Indonesia . These wQualitative in-depth data on trends and changes in the plant use patterns were obtained through four focus group discussions (1 FGD per 1 village). In total, 68 women took part, sometimes accompanied by husbands or heads of farmer groups. A trained facilitator led the discussions following an open-ended questionnaire, while assistants took notes. Besides general questions and answers, we applied two main participatory exercises: seasonal crop calendars  and 4-ceAfter data cleaning, the individual and quantitative data were analyzed initially by functions and pivot tables in Microsoft Excel, followed by the descriptive and inference statistics performed in the IBM SPSS program version 22 . The comparison of means between the ethnic groups was made by the Mann–Whitney U test. The relationships between knowledge of WFPs and socio-ecological characteristics were assessed by multiple linear regression to identify the predictors of traditional knowledge on WFPs. The relationship of plant parts used with the extent of their use was visualized by an Alluvial diagram using RAWGraphs , while tThe qualitative data, such as the reasons for changes in the use of WFPs, were coded and categorized into emerging themes through inductive thematic analysis . We opteWFPs were categorized into the food groups of dietary diversity . The reaThe traditional food system of the studied communities is strongly linked with rice production and with agroforestry gardens . Almost Cocoa agroforests were the major sources of WFPs, where 74 WFPs were found. This is noteworthy as agroforests are managed lands showing that some amount of human disturbance can result in a greater diversity of useful plants than in purely wild habitats . AftThe communities in Pasaman steward traditional knowledge on 106 WFPs, corresponding to 85 species, 65 genera and 37 botanical families . The besZ = −4.145; p = 0.000). Minangkabau were found to know 23 unique food plants which do not occur in the Mandailing area, whereas the Mandailing community had only 13 unique food plants. Overall, two-thirds of WFP diversity (67% = 70 WFPs) overlapped and were common to both ethnic groups. We ran multiple linear regressions to determine the predictors of traditional WFP knowledge, but none of our social or ecological variables significantly predicted the knowledge of WFPs (p > 0.05). In the final model, all the variables together gave a weak correlation of r = 0.260, and they predicted the knowledge only by 7% (R2 = 0.07). However, as mentioned above, Minang women knew a significantly higher number of WFPs, which is likely related to the greater remoteness of Minang villages from the main road. In addition, the Minang are the dominant and are the ancestral group of West Sumatra, whereas the Mandailing arrived from North Sumatra more recently.The distribution of WFPs across the food groups demonstrated that the most diverse were other fruits (30 WFPs), followed by other vegetables (29 WFPs), leafy vegetables (27 WFPs), pulses (6 WFPs), nuts and seeds (5 WFPs), vitamin A-rich plants (5 WFPs) and lastly starchy staples with 4 WFPs. Comparison of traditional WFP knowledge between ethnic groups showed that Minangkabau women were familiar with 93 WFPs compared to 83 WFPs known by Mandailing women . On averPerceptions and attitudes are principal drivers of human behavior. We assessed attitudes towards wild and cultivated food plants using “barrier analysis statements” , adjusteUsing a similar method, but with a simplified 3-option scale, we compared the perception of WFPs versus commercial food plants from markets. The answers of 95% of women clearly showed that WFPs have a lower market value. On the other hand, the majority of women perceived WFPs to be tastier than the purchased plants . Lastly, when asked about the image/prestige of wild and marketed plants, 47% of women considered them equal, 33% considered WFPs to be more prestigious and 20% considered them less prestigious. Overall, we can conclude that WFPs are perceived positively, but have a low economic value.To draw a full picture, we further let women list specific reasons for continuing the consumption of WFPs. What we found is that the most prevalent motivations were that WFPs are obtained for free or at a low cost (45%); that they are natural and unpolluted by agricultural chemicals (44%); and that some are still available and easy to obtain (32%) . While tIn general, the results showed that the collection and consumption of WFPs has declined over the last generation. The reasons for the changes, as well as the barriers and motivations for contemporary use of WFPs, were categorized into the following six themes: (i) availability; (ii) livelihood and lifestyle; (iii) food, consumption, health; (iv) income, marketing, economy; (v) multifunctionality/processing; and (vi) knowledge and skills. Thematically categorized motivations and barriers to the current use of wild vegetables, along with reasons for a greater use of wild vegetables in the past, are given in The motivations and barriers to the contemporary use of wild fruits, along with reasons for a greater use of them in the past, are given in We grouped all the reasons related to both wild vegetables and fruits according to the emerged themes . Each factor contains a paragraph on changes in the use of WFPs compared to the past, followed by information on contemporary barriers and motivations. The last paragraph discusses the changes on the ecological framework on what people eat  and atteChanges in the availability of WFPs were the most prevalent explanations for their decreased use. The most common reason was that WFPs were more abundant and easier to get in the past. Women further disclosed that in earlier times, the area was more forested and that people did not spray agricultural chemicals, which are now eradicating many WFPs and wild vegetables in particular. In addition, both gardens and landscapes were more spacious and more wild vegetables and fruits occurred there naturally. Currently, some WFPs are underutilized because they are not very available. Moreover, they are not so common in the markets, while other food options can be purchased or grown. Some wild fruits are now very rare or even extinct, and their presence is further undermined by spraying agricultural chemicals and removing shade trees. Lower availability of land has also become an issue.However, some WFP species are still widely utilized, and availability plays a crucial role for the persistence in their use. Women mentioned specific motivations related to availability, such as that WFPs can be collected easily and on your own. Or that some WFPs are still plentiful in nearby lands, while others are only available further in the forest. Some women also mentioned that WFPs could be shared with other people. A few women explained that they are used to eating them when there are no other vegetables or fruits, especially in the lean season. The general decrease in the availability of WFPs can be attributed to the changes in the physical environment, which according to the responses, is caused mainly by the overuse of external inputs and changes in land management.Minangkabau woman in Simpang village: “In the past, there were more forests, and people were collecting wild fruits and vegetables more. Now people use chemicals in the fields and wild food plants are gone”.Mandailing woman in Sontang village: “Older people are more used to the taste of wild food plants from the past, well we like them too, the main issue is that they became rare and far”.Changes in livelihoods and lifestyles were also found to be common reasons for abandoning the use of WFPs. In the past, people were gathering plants more collectively and they were going to forests more frequently for non-timber forest products. Besides, more people were gardening and there were also more enthusiasts using WFPs. Currently, there is a reduced interest in some WFPs. People are now busier and there is not as much time as in the past. In addition, tastes started to change, especially with the younger generations and their less natural way of life.Despite the generally negative impact of lifestyle changes on the use of WFPs, some people are still enthusiastic about WFPs and eat them quite regularly.The lifestyle changes and convenience issues affecting the use of WFPs are happening at the individual , social, and macro-level on the ecological framework on what people eat. They are likely driven by modern trends and changing socio-economic needs.Mandailing woman in Sontang village: “Before people used to eat more wild food plants as there were less cultivated crops. Now more fruits and vegetables are being cultivated, traded and preferred in general.”Women explained that the taste of WFPs were perceived to be better in the past. People also valued natural food and the health benefits of WFPs more. Some women mentioned that WFPs were common foods needed every day. Currently, many WFPs are not consumed much as their taste is less preferred and they have become foods that people eat occasionally. Sometimes, older people might like them more, but in general, people are consuming more cultivated plants and purchased foods.However, there are large differences in the extent of using different species, and some WFPs are still eaten regularly as they are considered tasty, natural and healthy foods. Regarding wild fruits, it appears that they are more popular among children. Wild vegetables are perceived by women to be healthy and rich in nutrients.The changes in use related to food, consumption and health belong to the personal factors and physical food environment in the ecological framework. Based on the responses, the changes in this theme appear to be driven mainly by changes in the markets and agriculture production.Minangkabau woman in Alahan Mati village: “I continue eating wild food plants because they are rich in vitamins, tasty, and they do not contain pesticides”.Many people stated that WFPs were cheap or free, which was even more important in the past. In the past, more people were also engaged in selling WFPs. Economic factors appear not to have changed the use of WFPs dramatically, and some women continue to sell or buy them, however, the number of people engaged in this is lower. Nowadays, cultivated plants and food products are being sold and bought more.Women still value the fact that WFPs are free . Some women noted that several of these plants have an economic value and are still a source of income.The discussed economic factors such as expenditures and income are related to the personal factors as well as to physical environment (markets). The current trend of selling and buying more cultivated plants or processed foods is also likely driven by changes in the markets, agricultural production, and a better livelihood opportunity.Mandailing woman in Sontang village: “In the past, people did not need to buy fruits and vegetables on the market, but now it is easier to buy them rather than go to the forest”.Minang woman in Simpang village: “Wild edibles are good because they are available and fresh natural food which is for free”.In the past, women were more used to traditional processing and the cooking of wild foods. Nowadays, some women still appreciate that WFPs can be processed and used according to taste and occasion. But generally, collecting and processing WFPs is considered more demanding, less convenient, and is done less frequently. Buying and cooking food ingredients purchased at the local market is considered to be more convenient and it is becoming more common. Interestingly, women pointed out that some species are used more because of their multiple benefits and also their medicinal value in some cases.The changes in this theme are mostly related to convenience and skills which are belonging to the personal factors on the ecological framework. The reduced processing and cooking of WFPs is driven largely by changing lifestyles and markets.Minangkabau woman in the Alahan Mati village: “The process of preparing and cooking wild vegetables takes a long time”.A generation ago, people had a richer knowledge of WFPs. Currently, while the common WFPs are known to everyone, some women are not familiar with the taste of some less common WFPs and others do not even know that certain WFPs are edible. A further barrier is the lack of knowledge on how to cook these traditional foods. Another reason mentioned by farmers was missing knowledge of how to cultivate wild plants. From these points we can see first that there is a loss of traditional knowledge on diversity and uses of some WFPs; second, that there is lack of knowledge on improved management, the domestication of these wild resources and little innovation of cooking or processing methods.The issues with limited knowledge and skills can be considered personal factors. The weaker traditional knowledge seems to be caused by lack of its transmission driven by changes in lifestyles and food environment, whereas the lack of modern knowledge can be associated with gaps in the education system and a lack of relevant policies and innovations in science and technology.Group of Minangkabau women: “We don’t know how to cultivate or manage some less common wild species, and only a few women know how to cook them”.Elateriospermum tapos Blume, Plukenetia corniculata Sm., Hornstedtia conica Ridl., Hornstedtia elongata (Teijsm. and Binn.) K. Schum. or Salacca sumatrana Becc.The total number of 106 WFPs (85 species) documented represents a relatively high diversity. A recent study in a Mandailing community in North Sumatra showed that 106 food plant species are being used, including wild and cultivated ones . FurtherThe studied communities do not strictly divide between wild or cultivated plants, and in daily life, they call food plants by their vernacular names without further distinguishing. Sometimes they distinguish between traditional and modern food plants, where they use the term “local” for indigenous food plants and “modern/from the market” for the exotic and commercialized plants. Most respondents did not consider WFPs as “food of the poor”, a notion that has often developed in some regions  or “famiMost of the available studies from various regions have found that socio-cultural factors are the main drivers of the reduced consumption of WFPs ,73,74,75Łuczaj et al.  showed tBesides reduced availability, other reasons for not consuming WFPs were limited knowledge about their nutrition and health benefits, time involved to collect and prepare these foods and the lower economic value of these resources. Limited information on nutrient composition of wild foods is a well-known challenge ,80 and mFAO  identifiUnderstanding the motivations of human behavior can enable us to design more effective solutions to achieve the needed changes. More studies have looked at the reasons for the decrease in WFPs, as opposed to the actual motivations for their continued consumption. This is likely due to the global downward trend in the use of WFPs. Despite the overall decreasing trend, some studies in Himachal Pradesh , North-EPublic health policy across many countries tends to operate within a model of food security and nutrition that discounts the biodiversity and traditional food practices of the communities . MoreoveWhat needs to be recognized is that WFPs have to be sustained in a participatory manner with local communities and their evolving intercultural knowledge. This inclusive approach of food biodiversity conservation through local knowledge and practices allows the continuous evolution and adaptation to socio-ecological change ,87. To gThe sustainability of use is an important aspect that needs to be considered where wild plants are being used and particularly when they are being promoted. Overharvesting or using whole plants or certain plant parts such as roots can have strong implications for the existence of these resources and should be avoided . In the http://proseanet.org/prosea/), existing food, ethnobiological and biodiversity studies, and conduct food mapping or barrier analysis where knowledge gaps exist. This should include an innovative action bringing the knowledge to the broader public and supporting actions at the local level. In the context of scaling sustainable use of WFPs in Indonesia, the country could build on the previous work of PROSEA  and changes in perceptions and lifestyle. The main overall drivers of change appear to be socio-economic factors, agriculture intensification and changing markets. On the ecological framework on what people eat , most ofThe findings inform us what barriers and motivations can be acted upon to counteract underutilization and loss of this food biodiversity. This study found large differences in use and valuation of individual species, and a whole range of factors affecting whether the species is utilized, underutilized or abandoned. The fact that the local communities perceive WFPs positively offers an important opportunity for their successful promotion. This should be supported by actions for increasing their availability and raising awareness to fill the knowledge gap about their benefits. Both traditional and modern knowledge of these foods could be integrated into agriculture, food, nutrition, health, tourism, social and education programs in the area. There is a need for communities, government and NGOs to come together to undertake creative action to optimize the use of WFPs in an inclusive and sustainable way. This integrated approach of “conservation through use” could improve nutrition and health while conserving biodiversity and traditional knowledge.


Due to welfare issues, the physical castration of male pigs is decreasing, and the entire male pig production is increasing. Fattening entire male pigs requires control due to the possibility of accumulating off odour/flavour called boar taint, which is mainly due to two compounds - skatole and androstenone. If carcasses with boar taint reach the market, it can cause a negative consumer reaction which may have economic consequences for the whole meat chain. Thus, it is necessary to sort out carcasses at the slaughter line. Today, a sensory quality control (human nose method) is used in some slaughter plants for this purpose. Detection by physical or chemical methods is also envisaged. A colorimetric method to determine skatole has been used in Danish abattoirs for decades, but it is foreseen that it will soon be replaced by the laser diode thermal desorption ion source coupled with a mass spectrometry equipment that allows a fully automated classification based on skatole and androstenone levels at speed line, with a delay of less than 40 min. Other potential methods such as the electrochemical biosensors, rapid evaporative ionization mass spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, still need further development and validation for an application at abattoir level.Classification of carcasses at the slaughter line allows an optimisation of its processing and differentiated payment to producers. Boar taint is a quality characteristic that is evaluated in some slaughter plants. This odour and flavour is mostly present in entire males and perceived generally by sensitive consumers as unpleasant. In the present work, the methodologies currently used in slaughter plants for boar taint classification  and the methodologies that have the potential to be implemented on/at the slaughter line  have been summarized. Their main characteristics are presented and an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) has been carried out. From this, we can conclude that, apart from human nose, the technology that arises as very promising and available on the market, and that will probably become a substitute for the colorimetric method, is the tandem between the laser diode thermal desorption ion source and the mass spectrometry (LDTD-MS/MS) with automation of the sampling and sample pre-treatment, because it is able to work at the slaughter line, is fast and robust, and measures both androstenone and skatole. Classification of pig carcasses and pork meat at the slaughter line allow both for an optimisation of its processing and for a transparent payment to producers. For these purposes, carcass grading is carried out in most countries using several types of devices, either manual, semi-automatic or fully automatic, based on a ruler, ultrasounds, reflectance, vision, electromagnetism or impedance ,2,3. In Integrating on/at line determination of meat and fat quality characteristics in the classification of carcass (and cuts) would be a very powerful tool for meat industries to increase their market position. Several spectroscopic and imaging technologies have the potential to be used on line for meat quality determination ,7,8. FatBoar taint is generally described as an unpleasant odour/flavour for sensitive consumers  that caOver the years, numerous chemical methods have been developed to determine boar taint compounds mainly based on liquid or gas chromatography ,30. WhilBoar taint classification can be performed on line (measurements made directly on the carcass on the slaughter line) or at line (sample is removed from the stream and measurements are made in a separate room in the slaughter plant). It may be based on the determination of androstenone and skatole levels (whilst applying defined rejection thresholds), or on the sensory assessment of boar taint presence. This determination can be a direct measurement of androstenone, skatole or boar taint levels or an indirect measurement, i.e., a prediction of the compounds. Within the BoarCheck project  a deep aOn line methods detect boar taint or boar taint compounds at the slaughter line level without taking samples from the carcass. They implicitly need to be rapid, can be connected to the slaughter line network to capture results at individual carcass level and are robust enough to be used in the working conditions of the abattoirs. At line methods may also be used at the abattoir although not just beside the line but in a separate room close to the line and thus require sampling. They are also rapid in the determination of boar taint or boar taint compounds, enabling a result to be produced before the carcasses leave the slaughter plant. The methods already used are the sensory evaluation by a trained panel (on line or at line), a colorimetric method (at line) and eventually a method based on LDTD-MS/MS (at line). Among the methods that show interesting results are the rapid evaporative ionization mass spectroscopy (REIMS), Raman spectroscopy and electrochemical biosensors. These methods are presented in the next sections of this paper. There are other potential methods in development such as gas phase measurement combining Fourier Transform Infrared and Photo Acoustic Spectroscopy, gas phase fingerprint and gas-sensor array, immunological methods, insect based biosensors  and soliAll the methods described here perform the analysis of boar taint, androstenone or skatole in fat instead of meat tissue. Androstenone and skatole are accumulated in fat  which isSensory evaluation allows a quantitative and qualitative characterization of foods. Analytical sensory methods are often used by food industries for research and development, and as a quality control tool in various industries. There are official sensory quality protocols available . AnalytA sensory quality control of boar taint performed by sensitive and trained assessors (classifiers) on/at line is known as human nose methodology . The metThe following steps are needed to carry out the sensory evaluation:Assessors must be selected according to their ability to perceive both key boar taint components given the above described inter-individual variability in olfactory acuity to both androstenone and skatole and the well-known anosmia to androstenone that strongly influence the individual perception and thus sensory evaluation results ,48. For Training of the assessors consists of the following steps represented graphically in Step 1: Olfactory training: Specific olfactory training with boar taint compounds must be the starting point in assessor training. Discrimination tests should be performed to objectively evaluate the assessors’ ability to correctly discriminate androstenone and skatole from each other. Further training in identification and ranking is necessary. The training can be done using chemical substances such as 5α-androst-16-en-3-one and 3-methylindole, either mixed with oil ,49, in bStep 2: Training with biological samples  a. Training should also be carried out using native fat samples, with known levels of androstenone and skatole ,47,48. AStep 3: Training on line b. If the assessors are going to classify on line, i.e., directly on the carcass, a further step should be performed in order to train assessors to perform the evaluation in working conditions. In this case, parallel testing by more than one assessor is needed, followed by discussion to reach an agreement and to establish the scale of measure .Due to the chemical properties of boar taint compounds (low volatility), perception of androstenone and skatole is facilitated by heating the sample. This can be done using different technologies, such as microwaves, soldering iron, gas powered torch heated plate or hot water. The gas powered torch heated plate is the most commonly used for the on line method. Trautmann et al.  comparedAs for any other quality control tool, the performance of a sensory evaluation method must be objectively evaluated using statistical parameters such as sensitivity and specificity. It is important to note that the results of such a performance evaluation depend on the assessors and on what is considered as the “gold standard” reference . The reference that defines the true value can differ between studies making comparisons more difficult see . Using 1When sensory evaluation is carried out on line, van Wagenberg  establisTo improve the performance, it is important to clean the tip of the soldering iron after each sample to avoid cross-contamination, smell a blank sample after a tainted sample, carefully monitor the heating temperature  and alternate between assessors to avoid fatigue and saturation . PerformThe cost of this methodology is mainly related to human resources because the evaluation is usually performed by personnel of the abattoir. The cost of the evaluation of a sample would mainly be the hourly salary of the operator or the operators  to carry out the analysis divided by the number of carcasses evaluated each hour. Additional costs need to be considered such as time spent in training sessions, trainer salary and material for training. Further costs include the depreciation of the initial investment, e.g., when a sensory lab is used or for equipment to record the scores. Also, because of the necessity to alternate between assessors to avoid saturation or due to high speed of the slaughter line, more than one assessor is required to perform the evaluation. A fully automated colorimetric method was proposed by Mortensen . The metA fat sample is excised from the carcass. Four grams of fat are minced and mixed with 40 mL of extraction solution . The colThe response time (from sampling to result) is 10 to 20 min and up to 360 samples per hour can be analysed . AccuracThe cost of this methodology includes the depreciation of the initial investment of the sampling device, the sample conveying systems, the room to perform the analysis, the Technicon system and a spectrophotometer. Running costs include the reagents needed to carry out the analysis, the salary of the technician/s to take the samples, perform the analysis and interpret the results, maintenance of the device, and disposal of the residues generated in the analysis.New devices based on a laser diode thermal desorption ion source tandem mass spectrometry (LDTD-MS/MS) have been presented separately by the Danish Technological Institute (DTI)  and Shimg, 5 min) and 4 µL of supernatant is transferred to LazWellTM microtiter plates for desorbing, ionizing and measuring the analytes with two-dimensional mass spectrometry (MS/MS).Borggaard et al.  establis4 and Skatole-d3). The mixture is vortexed until fat dissolution  and left to rest until phase separation (2 min); 4 µL of supernatant, upper layer, are placed in a LazWell™ plate and there is a solvent evaporation (1 min at room temperature).Auger et al.  describeLDTD-MS/MS analysis continues as follows: after sample pre-treatment and a small amount of sample placed on a well plate and once the solvent evaporation is done or nearly done, a laser diode heats the back of the well plate transferring heat to the dried sample. The analyte is vaporized and carried along, together with the carrier gas, through the transfer tube until the corona discharge, where the analyte is chemically ionized at atmospheric pressure (APCI).In the WIPO patent, WO2016139291 Lund and Borggaard  describeThe cost of this methodology includes the depreciation of the initial investment for the acquisition of the mass spectrometer, the laser diode thermal desorption ion source and the surrounding lab environment. Running costs include the reagents needed to carry out the analysis, the salary of the technician taking the sample, performing the analysis and interpreting the results, the maintenance of the device, and a cost for disposal of the residues generated in the analysis. Additional depreciation and maintenance costs will emerge if sampling and sample pre-treatment are automated to facilitate the use of this technology at abattoir level, but some personnel costs can then be avoided.Rapid evaporative ionization mass spectroscopy (REIMS) was first proposed by Schäfer et al.  for a meVerplanken et al.  applied A discrimination model, using orthogonal partial least-square discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), was built with both positive (50) and negative (50) boar taint carcasses  as well as sows (50) in order to obtain a fingerprint of the boar taint mass spectra and construct predictive models. After elimination of 5 outliers, all blank and negative samples were correctly classified by cross validation whilst they achieved 98% accuracy for tainted carcasses (OPLS-DA model), taking chemical (androstenone and skatole levels measured by UHPLC-HRMS) and sensory evaluation as a reference. Robustness was tested by reducing the heater power of the settings which resulted in a lower accuracy (89%) for the correct classification of the three groups of samples. Recently, REIMS has been tested at slaughter plant level, sampling carcasses every 10 s. For this purpose, a calibration model was previously developed in a laboratory using 1097 samples and, later, the training phase was repeated in situ at the abattoir in 554 samples and classified tainted carcasses using an untargeted AMS (ambient mass spectra) approach, but no performance data has been provided . IndirecThe cost of this methodology includes the depreciation of the initial investment for the acquisition of the mass spectrometry iKnife hand-held sampling device. It is also necessary to include as running costs the reagents needed to carry out the analysis, the salary of the technician to perform the analysis and interpret the results, and the maintenance of the device. There is also a cost to move away the residues generated in the analysis.Raman spectroscopy is a high-resolution photonic technique that provides both qualitative and quantitative information on the physico-chemical nature of a material. Described by the Indian physicists Raman and Krishnan , it is bRaman spectroscopy has a huge potential and, due to its portability and general performance, it has been used in pollutant environmental detection , pigmentGiven its speed, non-invasiveness and simple use, Raman spectroscopy has been proposed as a candidate option for the determination of the boar taint compounds, androstenone and skatole in pork fat ,75. The Raman technique can be applied directly on the fat surface, facilitating its use on/at line. Wang  used a tLiu et al.  worked w−1 with a resolution of 1 cm−1; they acquired at least 5 replications per sample, all of them at room temperature. The best value of accuracy reached in the publication showed ~92% for high concentrations of androstenone and skatole.Wang  performe−1, with 6 s of integration time, 10 accumulations per spectrum and a laser power of 50 mW. Per sample, 20 replicates (10 per fat layer) were carried out. Altogether, total acquisition time took 20 min per sample; from this, an analysis time of about one minute per sample can be determined. Finally, after removing outliers and using a specific range of measurement (958–972 cm−1 and 1354–1370 cm−1), they showed an accuracy of 81%, a sensitivity of 72% and a specificity and 88% whereby the reference (gold standard) was a classification into tainted/untainted samples based on sensory evaluation  as well as chemical analysis of androstenone and skatole (thresholds applied were 1.5 μg/g for androstenone and 0.2 μg/g for skatole).The device used by Liu et al.  was a haIndirect assessment of skatole and androstenone levels via a discriminant model, probably linked to fatty acid composition of the tissue, is unlikely to be accurate in commercial slaughterhouse conditions where pigs from different genotypes are coming from different farms and receiving diets differing in their fatty acid composition.Based on Raman spectroscopy, Sørensen et al.  used a sThe cost of this methodology includes the depreciation of the initial investment for the acquisition of the Raman fix device or the Raman hand-held device. It is also necessary to include the running costs of the technician to take the sample if the measure is at line, the technician to perform the analysis and interpret the results  and the maintenance of the device.Biosensors based on screen-printed carbon electrodes are electroanalytical devices that allow the detection and quantification of a target compound via the oscillations of differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) provoked by the activity of a specific enzyme in presence of the before mentioned target molecule. Basically, the working electrode is made of carbon ink together with the enzyme immobilized onto its surface and a mediator. The mediator actively uses the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) electrons to be reduced and then oxidised, which constitutes the analytical signal. The crux of the matter is that the target compound is acting as a cofactor for the enzyme used; in presence of the molecule (androstenone and/or skatole), the enzyme becomes reduced and the molecule oxidized due to the cofactor NAD, which is acting as an electron carrier. As long as the enzyme is competing with the mediator, in presence of the target compound, the lecture of the signal will be altered proportional to the quantity of the monitored molecule .Biosensors can be applied at a wide spectrum of different fields: for the detection of drug molecules like benzodiazepines , vitaminWestmacott et al.  designedBiosensors can target from single atoms to complex proteins and, depending on the ligand, the desirable assay time could vary, as could the sensitivity, the lower and upper range of measurement or the stability of the biosensor . All theAccording to the authors, both sensors are disposable avoiding the cross contamination between samples. However, in large slaughterhouses (500–600 carcasses/h) the number of biosensors required as well as the time needed to replace them (up time) must be considered.Hart et al.  reported2 = 0.93 for androstenone and r2 = 0.80 for skatole but it should be validated with higher number of samples. However, the accuracy of this method compared to the reference method was not very high. The recovery of the biosensors against as chromatography resulted in 95.9% (AND) and 114.5% (SKA). For both coefficient of determination and recovery, a total of 21 and 14 samples were used for androstenone and skatole analyses, respectively.The performance of a biosensor can be considered as optimal when linearity is observed between the amount of ligand and the obtained signal. Westmacott et al.  found thMeasurement time reported in Haugen et al.  was 30 sThe cost of this methodology includes the acquisition of biosensors. It is also necessary to include the technician that will insert and extract the biosensor and do the analysis. If biosensors are reusable, the cost of cleaning them to avoid cross-contamination would need to be considered and a renovation plan is also needed when they need to be changed. To avoid cross-contamination, biosensors can be developed as disposable. In this case, they cannot be reused and one biosensor per carcass to be evaluated is needed and considered in the cost.The reviewed methodologies and technologies to determine boar taint or boar taint compounds, have some characteristics that are common between them and others that make them unique. When evaluating the methodologies for carcass and meat grading, aspects such as speed and capacity, invasiveness-destructiveness, automation, on line evaluation, performance, cost-effectiveness, multi-uses and correlation with consumers’ perception have to be considered . In any Technology Readiness Level (TRL) is a commonly-used scale that measures the maturity of technologies that stablish 9 levels : TRL-1 . This can be considered a weakness of the method because androstenone is not measured. However, although boar taint is related to both skatole and androstenone, there is a significant correlation between skatole equivalents and sensory evaluation by trained assessors )gold standard, this could be (i) the androstenone and skatole levels based on standardized chemical reference methods, (ii) boar taint intensity (or intensities of androstenone and/or skatole odour) or (iii) the consumers’ liking. Consumers’ liking of the pork would probably be the ideal measure since consumers are the last link in the production chain and, consequently, those who will accept or reject the pork if tainted. Nevertheless, there are important differences in consumers’ liking of meat that depend on many different psychological, sensorial and marketing factors [Regarding the performance, it is difficult to compare between various measurement principles and/or studies. This difficulty is related mainly to three aspects: the reference sample used as gold standard ,100, the factors   large abattoirs where many male carcasses are slaughtered. Some other technologies are more affordable and feasible for smaller slaughter plants or slaughter plants with a low proportion of entire male pigs.In addition, the Thus, cost-effectiveness, the characteristics of the abattoir together with the performance, availability and possibility of automation of the technology, maintenance service, as well as the commercial importance of having a sorting system, are factors that will steer the industry to determine the most suitable technology that meets their needs and possibilities.All of the above-mentioned methodologies perform the evaluation or the sampling in one specific place of the carcass, usually the subcutaneous fat of the neck region, and this is another important issue that may affect the final results. Skatole content depends on the place of sampling in the carcass ,103, altmulti-uses devices that are able to predict more than one characteristic. LDTD-MS/MS, REIMS and Raman have this potential, which is a great opportunity and benefit of these methods.Innovation in grading systems that go beyond lean meat and boar taint by including important technological meat quality traits such as intramuscular fat, fatty acids composition and water holding capacity and eating quality traits, would be of great interest for the meat industry. This would allow a better classification of meat, optimize its processing and help to reach the right market according to the product characteristics and the consumer demands. This could be done by using several types of classification devices or using This overview of the different methodologies to determine boar taint at/on line, allows us to conclude that the technology that arises as most promising and readily available is the combination of laser diode thermal desorption and 2 dimensional mass spectrometry (LDTD-MS/MS). It automatizes both the sampling and sample preparation and it allows work to be undertaken at line, is fast and robust and measures both androstenone and skatole with high accuracy and precision. It appears to be a viable option for (very) large slaughter plants where the number of carcasses to be classified is big enough to pay off the technology. In smaller slaughter plants, sensory evaluation is suitable. It is a direct assessment of the sensory perception and, if assessors are well trained, it is robust enough to classify carcasses. However, it should be taken into account that sensory evaluation (human nose scoring), due to its speed, can also be used in large slaughter plants with satisfactory results. Finally, the economical and practical constraints will determine which method is best suited, depending on the share of entire male pigs, the importance of classification based on sensory or chemical analysis for their markets, the ease of implementation, the availability, and the price. Also, it will be a decision of the slaughter plants to use the classification for sorting out carcasses and/or for payment. The other technologies that we evaluated, namely, electrochemical biosensors, REIMS and Raman spectroscopy, still need to be further optimized and validated within abattoir conditions; their performance in these conditions needs to be determined. Compared to the study performed in 2012 within the BoarCheck EU project, improvements in sensory evaluation methodologies have been performed and have been implemented in more slaughter plants. In addition, LDTD-MS/MS has evolved and is entering the market. Other technologies have emerged as potentially applicable at slaughter plant level such as electrochemical biosensors, Raman spectroscopy and REIMS.