An economic model of the meat paradox

Abstract

Many individuals have empathetic feelings towards animals but frequently consume meat. We investigate this "meat paradox" using insights from the literature on motivated reasoning in moral dilemmata. We develop a model where individuals form self-serving beliefs about the suffering of animals caused by meat consumption in order to alleviate the guilt associated with their dietary choices. The model predicts that the price of meat has a causal effect on individuals' beliefs: high prices foster realism by lowering the returns to self-deception, which magnify the price elasticity of meat consumption. The model also predicts a positive relationship between individuals' taste for meat and their propensity to engage in self-deception, a causal effect of aggregate consumption on individual beliefs, and the coexistence of equilibria of "collective realism" and "collective denial".

Moderate Versus Radical NGOs†

“…In terms of elasticities, a 1% higher PMJ score produces a rise of 0.60% in the PMJ (p < 0.001). This positive relationship is in line with previous work looking at the link between diet and pro-meat justifications (Loughnan, Haslam, and Bastian 2010;Hestermann, Le Yaouanq, and Treich 2020).…”

“…Several contributions have suggested that individuals have imperfect knowledge about the negative externalities of meat consumption on animals, and that this ignorance is related to motivated reasoning (Loughnan, Haslam, and Bastian 2010;Loughnan, Bastian, and Haslam 2014;Graça, Calheiros, and Oliveira 2016;Piazza and Loughnan 2016;Hestermann, Le Yaouanq, and Treich 2020;Espinosa and Stoop 2020). We do not focus here on emotional or strategic concerns, but rather build on this recent behavioral-economics literature showing that individuals may have incentives to ignore the most impactful messages (see the theoretical-background subsection).…”

“…These appear in the Appendix. The first referred to the participants' diet, as this has been shown to be closely related to the perception of animals and beliefs about the living conditions of farmed animals (Piazza et al 2015;Hestermann, Le Yaouanq, and Treich 2020). Participants were asked with which frequency they eat the following products: red meat, white meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, vegetables, pulses, fruit and starchy foods.…”

“…In this appendix, we want to compare theoretically the effect of a moderate message to that of a radical message on the adoption of a moral action. The model is adapted from Benabou andTirole (2002, 2016) and Hestermann et al (2020). This is a model of cognitive/moral dissonance.…”

Cultured Meat: Promises and Challenges

“…A related implication concerns the meat paradox hypothesis: consumers form self‐serving beliefs in order to reduce the feeling of guilt associated with meat eating (Loughnan et al 2010 ; Hestermann et al 2020 ). That is, people like to eat animals but do not like to feel responsible for the suffering and slaughter of animals, and look (perhaps subconsciously) for excuses and justifications.…”