Naturalness Concerns And Clean Meat Acceptance- A Faunalytics Study (Faunalytics)

Background

Clean meat (also called cultured meat, in vitro meat, etc.) is grown from animal cells in a clean facility without the need to slaughter an animal. It is not yet commercially available, but several companies are working toward having products in stores in the next few years.

Meanwhile, consumer researchers are trying to gauge the likely reaction to clean meat when it comes to market. So far, reactions have been quite mixed. Some people are very excited about it, but others are extremely reluctant. Previously observed rates of willingness to try clean meat have ranged from 16% to 65%.

One key concern is the “ick factor”—the idea that clean meat is unnatural and therefore bad to eat. This concern is an important one to address because similar consumer concerns likely contributed to policies restricting the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) foods in Western Europe.

The goal of this study was to find ways of describing clean meat that could address naturalness concerns and increase acceptance of this new product. Participants read one of three messages intended to address those concerns or a control message similar to those currently in use. They then answered questions about their acceptance of clean meat: willingness to try it, beliefs about it, emotional reaction to it, willingness to pay for it, and more.

Key Findings

Acceptance of clean meat was high (and higher than has been observed in many previous studies): Specifically, in this study, 66% of people were willing to try clean meat, 46% were willing to buy clean meat regularly, and 53% were willing to eat clean meat as a replacement for conventional meat.
Telling potential consumers about the unnatural side of conventional meat was effective: People who read about the unnatural conditions in which farmed animals are raised came to believe that conventional meat is unnatural.
Describing conventional meat as unnatural produced the most acceptance of clean meat: Potential consumers who read this message were willing to pay more for clean meat than those who didn’t. People who read this message also tended to be the most positive about clean meat in a variety of other ways: attitudes, feelings, and beliefs.
Trying to directly reduce naturalness concerns was ineffective: The other two messages tested in this study—which described the natural side of clean meat and questioned the idea that naturalness is important, respectively—were not convincing to participants.

Implications

In a real-world context, consumers will not answer questions about their willingness to eat clean meat, they will be faced with a choice between it and the more familiar, conventionally-produced meat. These results suggest that, in that choice context, focusing on the unnatural aspects of conventional meat may be the most effective way of increasing interest in clean meat. In short, it appears to make consumers more aware of the positive contrast between them.

That being said, such an approach would represent a fairly aggressive stance towards conventional meat producers, which may not be an optimal strategy for advancing clean meat. Several conventional meat producers are already backing clean meat technology, so encouraging others to do so as well may be a better strategy than fighting them with legal challenges or marketing. This question warrants further consideration.

Given the care that was taken in developing the experimental messages, and their lack of influence over the outcome variables, we believe it is reasonable to interpret these results as an indication that arguing for clean meat’s naturalness or the unimportance of naturalness are difficult strategies to use effectively.