Abstract
Consumers have started to become aware of the negative aspects of conventional meat, including concerns about environmental issues, animal welfare, and consumer health. Alternative meats (i.e., cultured meat and plant-based meat alternatives) have been introduced recently to address these problems, and the rapid growth of the alternative meat market could pose a threat to the conventional meat market. It is necessary to identify the features of alternative meat that affect consumers’ purchasing intentions. Thus, we aimed to: (1) explore the positive and negative feelings toward alternative meat and (2) compare the differences in factors influencing alternative meat buying intentions. This study conducted an online survey with Korean participants in two separate sections (cultured meat: n = 513; plant-based meat alternatives: n = 504), and relationships between the variables and willingness to buy were analyzed using the partial least squares method. The results showed that sustainability and food neophobia are two of the different factors, and food curiosity, unnaturalness, and distrust of biotechnology are the common factors affecting consumers’ purchasing choice. The results of this study provide useful guidelines for effective promotional messages about cultured meat, plant-based meat alternatives, and conventional meat marketers focusing on the positive and negative aspects of significant factors.
Highlights
With the growth in meat consumption, concerns about meat production systems are on the rise as well
This study demonstrated that the consumers’ buying intentions concerning cultured meat and plant-based meat alternative are different based on concepts of ambivalence
We identified the positive and negative cognitions depending on their perception of cultured meat and plant-based meat alternative attributes
Summary
With the growth in meat consumption, concerns about meat production systems are on the rise as well. Many studies investigating conventional meat production systems have found that they utilize high amounts of energy, land, and water [1,2]. To produce large amounts of farm-grown meat, many animals need to live indoors under strictly controlled conditions and to be slaughtered, creating ethical issues [3,4]. As consumers have learned about these issues, they feel conflicted when eating meat and want to buy sustainable meat [2,3,5]. Alternative meat is one of the biggest issues arising in food technologies [8], and it is proposed as an opportunity to address some of the problems created by conventional meat production and consumption [9]
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