Is India Ready for Alt-Meat? Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Meat Alternatives

Edward C Jaenicke,Daniel A Brent,Rashmit S Arora

doi:10.3390/su12114377

Abstract

Little is known about the consumer preferences of next-generation plant-based and cell-based meat alternatives, two food technologies that offer a demand-side solution to the environmental, nutritional, and other societal concerns associated with animal-intensive agriculture. To address this gap, this paper estimates consumers’ willingness to pay for four sources of protein (conventional meat, plant-based meat, cell-based meat, and chickpeas) in a developing country with rising demand for meat—India. A latent class model of a discrete choice experiment conducted in Mumbai identifies four heterogeneous segments in the Indian market. Aggregating across all four segments, respondents are willing to pay a premium for plant-based meat and a smaller premium for cell-based meat over the price of conventional meat. However, our main findings show that these premiums strongly differ across the four consumer-class segments. The results offer important insights into future price points and policy options that might make these meat alternatives commercially successful, and therefore, a viable option in addressing societal concerns.

Highlights

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that human populations have until 2030 to prevent global temperatures rising by 1.5 ◦C, beyond which the worst impacts of climate change, such as severe droughts, floods, and consequent surges in the flow of climate refugees, increase substantially [1]
Since next-generation plant-based meat and cell-based meat are relatively new product categories, it is critical to understand consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these meat alternatives relative to conventional meat, if the new products will play a role in reducing the environmental impact of food consumption
We address three primary research questions: (1) What is the WTP for meat alternatives in India; (2) what is the heterogeneity in WTP across consumer segments; and (3) what types of consumers are most likely to pay for meat alternatives? To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to estimate and report WTP for both plant- and cell-based meat alternatives

Summary

Introduction

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that human populations have until 2030 to prevent global temperatures rising by 1.5 ◦C, beyond which the worst impacts of climate change, such as severe droughts, floods, and consequent surges in the flow of climate refugees, increase substantially [1]. Demand-side policies aimed at promoting behavioral change are critical to mitigating the impacts of climate change [7] One such behavioral change being recommended by recent reports is a dietary shift towards reduced meat intake [8,9]; meat alternatives are a promising market-based solution that caters to this goal. Meat alternatives— known as meat analogues, meat substitutes, faux meat, mock meat, or imitation meat—emulate the textural, aesthetic, and chemical characteristics of meat products [10] They are made from plants (plant-based) or artificially replicated in a lab (cell-based). Since next-generation plant-based meat (e.g., the Beyond Meat and GoodDot Meat) and cell-based meat are relatively new product categories, it is critical to understand consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these meat alternatives relative to conventional meat, if the new products will play a role in reducing the environmental impact of food consumption. In a recent systematic review of studies projecting future dietary trends in India, Alae-Carew, Bird, Choudhury, et al [38] find that all eleven included studies project an increase in meat consumption, regardless of projection methodology

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Conclusion