The role of social identity motivation in dietary attitudes and behaviors among vegetarians

Abstract

People go vegetarian for a variety of reasons—most commonly motivated by concerns about animals, health, ecology, religion, or some combination of these motivations. Largely missing from existing perspectives on vegetarian motivation, however, is consideration of how construing vegetarianism as a social identity may motivate vegetarian-relevant behavior. We advance that the desire to adopt and affirm a vegetarian identity and to see this identity in a positive light may represent an overlooked, but meaningful, source of motivation for vegetarianism. In the current study (N = 380), we tested the predictive values of animal, health, ecological, religious, and social identity motivations among vegetarians for a variety of attitudes and behaviors. Over and above other motivational factors and the centrality and salience of being a vegetarian, social identity motivation uniquely predicted several relevant outcomes, including the tendency to violate one's vegetarian diet. These findings suggest that the desire to adopt and affirm a vegetarian identity may be a unique and meaningful motivation underlying one's choice to forgo meat.