Consumers’ willingness to purchase three alternatives to meat proteins in the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and the Dominican Republic

Abstract

One of the current trends in dietary preferences involves the transition to a low-or reduced-meat diet, which is often desirable for health and environmental reasons. This change in dietary preferences requires an in-depth insight into consumers´ preferences towards a variety of alternative/non-meat proteins. This study aimed to investigate the consumers' preferences and willingness to purchase three alternative dietary protein sources, namely plant-, cultured meat-and insect-based proteins in four countries with dissimilar economic development status (the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and the Dominican Republic). It also aimed to determine which factors would most influence the willingness to purchase. From a total sample of 729 valid respondents, psychographic variables were analysed. The alternative protein deemed the respondents' most preferred willing to purchase was the plant-based type since that option tended to be more widely available in the market. Among the analysed economic groups, the countries classified in the higher economic groups tended to show more readiness to replace traditional meats for the three alternatives. Models suggest that the respondents regarded the alternative characteristics and/or the attributes compared to meat as being the most important factors that influence their willingness to purchase rather than environmental, convenience or healthy buying decisions, or a low level of neophobia. If the perception of healthiness, safety and nutritiousness increases one-unit for the cultured meat in Brazil, the probability of willingness to purchase would increase 86.82%. One-unit stronger belief in Spanish that plant-based are healthy, safe and nutritious higher the probability of willingness to purchase 68.74%. One-unit higher perceive the characteristics of healthiness, safety and nutritional content of the insectsbased products would increase 68% the probability of willingness to purchase in the United Kingdom, 72% in Brazil and 58% in the Dominican Republic.

Factors Affecting Consumers’ Alternative Meats Buying Intentions: Plant-Based Meat Alternative and Cultured Meat

“…On the other hand, for plant-based meat alternatives, food neophobia had no influence on purchase intention. In the Dominican Republic, food neophobia has a negative effect on the purchase of plant-based meat [34], but our results investigated food neophobia has no effect on plant-based meat. The reason for this is that an increasing number of people have become vegetarian and try to eat a plant-based diet or reduce their meat consumption [90].…”

“…Although many authors have figured out the common objections to and acceptance of each of them, we found few studies focusing on the two kinds of alternative meat integrally. In addition, although some papers contain both kinds of alternative meat [29,34,85] in the case of various countries, this is the first paper that deals with Korean pertaining to consumer psychology. Since meat is one of the most important ingredients affected by culture, we expected that alternative meat acceptances have different results in various countries.…”

“…Although these alternative meats have gained approval for regulation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) [32], many consumers are still afraid of the potential danger of technology [33]. Furthermore, alternative meat is not familiar to consumers, so consumers can experience food neophobia [34]. Integrating previous studies allows the features of alternative meat to be classified into three overall categories: ethical features, including sustainability (positive) and unnaturalness (negative); food safety issues, including its being drug-free (positive) and distrust of biotechnology (negative); and consumers' initial reactions, including food curiosity (positive) and food neophobia (negative).…”

Consumer Acceptance of Cultured Meat: An Updated Review (2018–2020)

“…Gomez-Luciano, de Aguiar, Vriesekoop and Urbano (2019a) [25] Survey 729 adults in the UK, Spain, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic…”

“…In practice, consumer preferences for cultured meat over other alternative proteins will depend on factors such as price, which may not be salient to respondents in these studies. When asked about the expected price of alternative proteins relative to conventional meat, respondents across countries in Gomez-Luciano et al [25] indicated that they thought cultured meat would be the most expensive alternative.…”