Want To Persuade Americans To Swap Out Beef For Plant-Based Burgers, Taste Alone Won’t Do It
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 appeal (“good for the environment and animal welfare”), a health appeal (“good for your health – n...