Taste alone won’t persuade Americans to swap out beef for plant-based burgers
Does being told that a veggie burger, like the one on the right, is better for the environment make you more likely to choose it over beef? AP Photo/Nati Harnik Anna Mattila , Penn State The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Consumers are more likely to choose a plant-based meat substitute when the restaurant’s advertising highlights the social benefits of doing so rather than its taste, according to recently published research I conducted with a colleague. We also found that showcasing the social costs of meat consumption also leads to a preference for plant-based “meats.” To reach this conclusion, we conducted two online experiments to examine the advertising of plant-based burgers and meatballs. Participants were recruited via the crowdsourcing website Amazon Mechanical Turk. In the first one, 156 participants were shown one of three commercials for a plant-based burger. They saw either a social appe...