Resumen

GARCIA-MACEDA, Guadalupe; HERNANDEZ-MONTES, Arturo; YBARRA-MONCADA, Ma. Carmen  y  CASANAS-PIMENTEL, Rocío Guadalupe. Perception and meanings of the red guaje Leucaena esculenta (DC.) Benth. in the Ngiwa culture from Puebla, México. Polibotánica [online]. 2023, n.56, pp.287-309.  Epub 18-Sep-2023. ISSN 1405-2768.  https://doi.org/10.18387/polibotanica.56.15.

Red guaje (Leucaena esculenta (DC.) Benth.) is an edible plant widely distributed in Mexico, particularly in the Ngiwa region of Puebla. Users obtain functional, emotional, and abstract conceptualizations of various products in their cultural environment through perception. The objectives of the study were: a) to apply from social psychology a marketing method to identify the routes of influence of human values on the consumption of red guaje, and b) to determine the meanings that native consumers assign to the plant. A survey was conducted with 200 consumers, asking about the importance of specific tangible attributes of guaje and a set of 40 human values. An image of guaje was shown, and participants were asked to mention three words related to it. Factor analysis was used to generate factors for constructing multiple linear regression models. Three models were adjusted to estimate the multiple correlation coefficients: RModel1, RModel2, and RModel3. These models were composed of: consumption based on factors of tangible attributes, consumption based on factors of human values plus residuals of tangible attributes, and consumption based on factors of human values. A k-proportions test and the Marascuilo procedure were applied to word frequencies grouped by affinity. The direct route was calculated as the difference RModel2 - RModel1 (ΔR), and the indirect route as RModel3 - (ΔR). The direct influence was not found to be significant, indicating that human values flowed through the importance of tangible attributes. Red guaje exhibited a higher communality of utilitarian meanings (70.7%), with gastronomy (29.45%) and economy (22.75%) being the most prevalent, while seed preservation (1.15%) showed the lowest communality. Among the symbolic psychological meanings, hedonism (11.47%) and identity (9.18%) had the highest communalities.

Palabras llave : Fitogenetic resource; popoloca; culture; traditional food; communalities.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )