Do Consumers Perceive Cultivated Meat as a Sustainable Substitute to Conventional Meat? Assessing the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Cultivated Meat Acceptance
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Research Background
2.1. Cultivated Meat
2.2. Dual-Factor Theory
3. Research Model
4. Hypotheses Development
4.1. Facilitators of Sustainable Substitutability
4.1.1. Effect of Physical Health on Sustainable Substitutability
4.1.2. Effect of Animal Welfare on Sustainable Substitutability
4.1.3. Effect of Food Quality on Sustainable Substitutability
4.2. Inhibitors of Sustainable Substitutability
4.2.1. Effect of Unnaturalness on Sustainable Substitutability
4.2.2. Effect of Food Technology Neophobia on Sustainable Substitutability
4.3. Effect of Sustainable Substitutability on Purchase Intention
5. Method
5.1. Instrument Development
5.2. Data Administration
5.3. Pretesting
5.4. Primary Data Collection
6. Results and Discussion
6.1. Measurement Model
6.1.1. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
6.1.2. Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA)
6.2. Structural Model and Hypotheses Testing
7. Implications
7.1. Theoretical Implications
7.2. Practical Implications
8. Limitations and Future Research
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Factor | Item | FL | CR | AVE |
---|---|---|---|---|
Physical Health | PH1: Cultivated meat is likely to reduce diseases transmitted between live animals and humans. | 0.819 | 0.839 | 0.635 |
PH2: Cultivated meat is likely to reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses. | 0.812 | |||
PH3: Cultivated meat would introduce no potential contamination during the slaughter process. | 0.758 | |||
Animal welfare | AN1: The production of cultivated meat does not cause pain to animals. | 0.722 | 0.876 | 0.639 |
AN2: Cultivated meat is produced while respecting animal rights. | 0.856 | |||
AN3: Cultivated meat would improve animal welfare conditions. | 0.824 | |||
AN4: Consuming cultivated meat means that less animals will be killed. | 0.789 | |||
Food Quality | FD1: Cultivated meat would be as tasty as farm-raised meat. | 0.816 | 0.925 | 0.711 |
FD2: Cultivated meat would have as good of an appearance as farm-raised meat. | 0.830 | |||
FD3: Cultivated meat would be as tender as farm-raised meat. | 0.886 | |||
FD4: Cultivated meat would have the same nutritional value as farm-raised meat. | 0.839 | |||
FD5: Cultivated meat would have the same health benefits as farm-raised meat. | 0.844 | |||
Unnaturalness | UN1: Eating cultivated meat is an unnatural practice. | 0.870 | 0.903 | 0.702 |
UN2: Eating cultivated meat separates us further from nature. | 0.692 | |||
UN3: Growing meat from animals’ muscle stem cells is unnatural. | 0.878 | |||
UN4: Cultivated meat is unnatural because it is grown in a lab. | 0.896 | |||
Food Technology Neophobia | NP1: Society should not depend heavily on technology such as cultivated meat to solve its food problems. | 0.794 | 0.865 | 0.618 |
NP2: New food technologies to produce cultivated meat may have long-term negative environmental effects. | 0.827 | |||
NP3: It can be risky to switch to new food technologies such as cultivated meat too quickly. | 0.700 | |||
NP4: New food technologies are likely to have long-term negative health effects. | 0.816 | |||
Sustainable Substitutability | SU1: Cultivated meat as a substitute for farm-raised meat would be a long-term solution. | 0.872 | 0.923 | 0.750 |
SU2: Cultivated meat as a substitute for farm-raised meat would be sustainable. | 0.877 | |||
SU3: Cultivated meat as a substitute for farm-raised meat would be ethical. | 0.860 | |||
SU4: Cultivated meat as a substitute for farm-raised meat would be environmentally friendly. | 0.854 | |||
Purchase Intention | PI1: I would buy cultivated meat regularly. | 0.945 | 0.923 | 0.801 |
PI2: I would eat cultivated meat instead of farm-raised meat. | 0.937 | |||
PI3: I would pay more for cultivated meat than for farm-raised meat. | 0.795 |
Construct | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Physical health | 1.000 | ||||||
2. Animal welfare | 0.808 | 1.000 | |||||
3. Food quality | 0.348 | 0.249 | 1.000 | ||||
4. Unnaturalness | 0.367 | 0.378 | 0.796 | 1.000 | |||
5. Food technology neophobia | 0.806 | 0.768 | 0.447 | 0.537 | 1.000 | ||
6. Sustainable substitutability | 0.759 | 0.666 | 0.502 | 0.485 | 0.859 | 1.000 | |
7. Purchase intention | 0.706 | 0.633 | 0.487 | 0.443 | 0.799 | 0.886 | 1.000 |
Structural Path | Standardized Estimate | Unstandardized Estimate | Standard Error | z-Value | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
H1a | Physical health → sustainable substitutability (SU-ST) | 0.175 | 0.206 | 0.088 | 2.349 * |
H1b | Animal welfare → SU-ST | 0.192 | 0.279 | 0.089 | 3.135 ** |
H1c | Food quality → SU-ST | 0.579 | 0.599 | 0.069 | 8.686 *** |
H2a | Unnaturalness → SU-ST | 0.084 | 0.080 | 0.055 | 1.463 |
H2b | Food technology neophobia → SU-ST | −0.203 | −0.199 | 0.057 | −3.507 *** |
H3 | SU-ST → Purchase intention | 0.856 | 1.021 | 0.040 | 25.368 *** |
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Fu, W.; Zhang, H.; Whaley, J.E.; Kim, Y.-K. Do Consumers Perceive Cultivated Meat as a Sustainable Substitute to Conventional Meat? Assessing the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Cultivated Meat Acceptance. Sustainability 2023, 15, 11722. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511722
Fu W, Zhang H, Whaley JE, Kim Y-K. Do Consumers Perceive Cultivated Meat as a Sustainable Substitute to Conventional Meat? Assessing the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Cultivated Meat Acceptance. Sustainability. 2023; 15(15):11722. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511722
Chicago/Turabian StyleFu, Wei, Hongping Zhang, Jeremy E. Whaley, and Youn-Kyung Kim. 2023. "Do Consumers Perceive Cultivated Meat as a Sustainable Substitute to Conventional Meat? Assessing the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Cultivated Meat Acceptance" Sustainability 15, no. 15: 11722. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511722
APA StyleFu, W., Zhang, H., Whaley, J. E., & Kim, Y.-K. (2023). Do Consumers Perceive Cultivated Meat as a Sustainable Substitute to Conventional Meat? Assessing the Facilitators and Inhibitors of Cultivated Meat Acceptance. Sustainability, 15(15), 11722. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511722