Analyzing the importance of attributes for Brazilian consumers to replace conventional beef with cultured meat.

Abstract

Cultured meat has been proposed as an alternative source of protein to overcome the environmental and ethical problems associated with conventional meat production. However, the lack of consumers’ acceptance could be a major barrier to the introduction of cultured meat on a large scale. Despite Brazil being one of the countries that consumes the most meat per capita, little is known about Brazilian consumers’ preferences for alternative meat. The objective of this study is to identify which attributes influence consumers to possibly replace conventional beef meat with cultured meat in Brazil. An online survey was conducted, and Best-worst scaling methodology was applied to a sample of 225 consumers. The sampling leaned towards educated and employed residents of the southeast region of Brazil, which might not fully represent the Brazilian population. Despite limitations in terms of the sampling demographic, overall, Brazilians appear to be willing to consume cultured meat: 80.9% of the sample would be willing to try it, 61.3% would be willing to eat it regularly, and 56.9% would be willing to eat cultured meat as a replacement for conventionally produced beef. Despite the focus of this study being on attributes of a hypothetical product that is not commercially available, which might pose difficulty to consumers to predict their future consumption behavior, results show that the most important attributes influencing consumers to possibly replace conventional beef meat by cultured meat in Brazil are anticipated risk of zoonotic diseases, anticipated healthiness and anticipated food safety conditions. Attributes related to benefits at a global societal level and intrinsic characteristics of cultured meat were less important.