Modelling consumer acceptance of cultured meat

Abstract

Livestock production causes multiple global problems, including its contribution to climatechange. One emerging food production technology that aims to mitigate such negativeimpacts by reducing livestock production, is producing lab grown meat or cultured meat(CM). As for any emerging technology for novel foods production, next to technical and regulatory challenges, companies developing CM will also have to deal with issues of consumer acceptance. Previous research on novel foods produced with emerging technologies identified three categories of consumer acceptance predictors: Product-related factors, psychological factors and external factors. As variables representing all of these categories are often not included together in existing models on consumer acceptance of CM (e.g., familiarity and subjective norm), our study aimed to replicate and extend a widely cited one by Siegristand Hartmann (2020b). Using an online survey with 245 participants, results showed that the original model replication was not successful due to multicollinearity, although some predictors of consumer acceptance of CM were confirmed. Trust in the food industry, familiarity with CM and subjective norm regarding CM consumption, were found to be positively correlated with acceptance, while food neophobia and disgust evoked by CM were found to negatively predict CM acceptance. Disgust sensitivity, perceived naturalnessof CM, perceived benefits of CM and attitude towards nature were found to be nonsignificant predictors of consumer acceptance of CM. From this, implications for future research and CM marketing are discussed.

Date of Award	10 Nov 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rui Gaspar (Supervisor)