Chinese Consumers' Attitudes and Potential Acceptance toward Artificial Meat.

Jingjing Liu,Élise Hocquette,Sghaier Chriki,Marie-Pierre Ellies-Oury,Jean-François Hocquette

doi:10.3390/foods10020353

Abstract

The interest for artificial meat has recently expanded. However, from the literature, perception of artificial meat in China is not well known. A survey was thus carried out to investigate Chinese attitudes toward artificial meat. The answers of 4666 respondents concluded that 19.9% and 9.6% of them were definitely willing and unwilling to try artificial meat respectively, whereas 47.2% were not willing to eat it regularly, and 87.2% were willing to pay less for it compared to conventional meat. Finally, 52.9% of them will accept artificial meat as an alternative to conventional meat. Emotional resistance such as the perception of “absurdity or disgusting” would lead to no willingness to eat artificial meat regularly. The main concerns were related to safety and unnaturalness, but less to ethical and environmental issues as in Western countries. Nearly half of the respondents would like artificial meat to be safe, tasty, and nutritional. Whereas these expectations have low effects on willingness to try, they may induce consumers’ rejection to eat artificial meat regularly, underlying the weak relationship between wishes to try and to eat regularly. Thus, potential acceptance of artificial meat in China depends on Chinese catering culture, perception of food and traditional philosophy.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
This study investigated consumers’ attitudes, perspective, willingness, and potential acceptance of artificial meat in China
New information provided by this study is that nearly 90% of the respondents would be willing to pay less for artificial meat compared to conventional meat

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Despite improvements of conventional breeding and production systems, researchers and private companies have devoted themselves to the development of better alternatives to meat, other than highly marketed vegetarian meat alternatives [4] There is another type of meat alternative on the horizon–cell-based meat, or so-called artificial meat, known as cultured meat, cultivated meat, in vitro meat, or lab-grown meat [5,6], which can be grown from live animal stem cells rather than from farm animals [7]. Up to the present time, there have been various surveys regarding consumer acceptance of artificial meat, with most research focusing on Western countries [15,16], such as the United States and European countries These studies found that more than half of the respondents who participated in these surveys would be willing to try artificial meat but fewer participants would be willing to eat regularly or pay for this novel product [17]. Some of the major potential predictors of willingness to try, eat regularly, and pay for artificial meat, as well as potential reasons for willingness or non-willingness to try and perception about the feasibility of this novel product have been explored

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Conclusion