Coping with multiple identities related to meat consumption

Abstract

Global meat consumption poses a threat to environmental sustainability and human health. Therefore, moral and health-related norms connected to eating meat are changing and consumers experience conflicts when choosing between meat and nonmeat options in various situations. To achieve a better understanding of the nature of these conflicts and how consumers cope with them, we study identities related to meat consumption and how they are organized. Identity theories are used as the lens to address the self-relevance of meat to consumers. Thirteen Danish consumers shared how and why they ate, reduced, or avoided meat in a food-based photo-diary and in-depth interviews, supported by a visualization approach, developed from self-brand connection methods. Three higher-order identities (pragmatic idealist, ethical foodie, and healthy hedonist) emerged, governing the consumption, reduction, or avoidance of different meat categories. Identity conflicts between health, moral (e.g., animal welfare), and hedonic concerns were present, but also identity stigma. Coping mechanisms include change of salience and changing patterns of meat consumption. Campaigners promoting a reduction in meat consumption and developers of alternative protein foods can use these insights to target identities and facilitate conflict resolutions. However, more research is needed on how generalizable results are.

Plant-Based Meat Alternatives: Motivational Adoption Barriers and Solutions

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Capabilities and Opportunities of Flexitarians to Become Food Innovators for a Healthy Planet: Two Explorative Studies

“…Even though the field of meat reduction and flexitarianism has blossomed in recent years [5], this does not imply that it has reached a stage that leaves room only for quantitative studies. Recent qualitative studies [6][7][8][9][10][11] prove that interview-based research produces insightful results, highlighting mundane barriers or ordinary facilitators in the process of lowering meat consumption. Such everyday difficulties or possibilities are frequently situated in the domains of capabilities and opportunities.…”

Exploring the eudaimonic game experience through purchasing functional and nonfunctional items in MMORPGs

“…Furthermore, although we show that spending on in‐game items can enhance a player's eudaimonic game experience through psychological needs fulfillment, the level of expenditure could also undermine certain players’ experience and even generate game resistance (Ravoniarison & Benito, 2019). Future research may also explore the psychological motivations behind such resistance behavior, to identify and demarcate the range of perceptions that exist between those who are spending and not spending.…”

“…We employ a phenomenological approach to elucidate individual players' experiences and understand how they perceive the in-game purchases they have made. The phenomenological lens has been fruitful in prior research on consumer identity construction (Azemi et al, 2020), perceptions of one's own and others' eating patterns (Randers et al, 2020), personal grooming practices (Liu, 2019), and photo sharing on social media (Pera et al, 2020).…”