How meat reduction differs from other personal climate actions: Distinct concerns and cultural barriers among EU consumers

Joop de Boer*, Harry Aiking

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Meat reduction might become a new extension of the personal climate actions in the European Union (EU), but this development is not without challenges. Focusing on consumers, this paper investigates 1) how meat reduction is related to other climate actions and 2) how adopters of meat reduction and those who just take other actions differ in concerns about world problems and sociocultural characteristics. The data are from Eurobarometer 95.1 (Spring 2021). The analyses revealed that the adoption of meat reduction was related to the adoption of other climate actions, but that it was not on par with mainstream pro-environmental actions. Participants who incorporated meat reduction in their climate actions were more than the others motivated by broad environmental, social and public health concerns. Those who did not incorporate meat reduction scored lower on these concerns and might have been negatively affected by incongruences between the cultural meaning of meat reduction and their cultural identities in terms of right-wing positions, masculinity or social class. The results showed that meat reduction is part of an adoption process and that the Northwestern countries were somewhat further on in this process than the Southern and Eastern countries.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104646
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalFood Quality and Preference
Volume101
Early online date28 May 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. It should be mentioned that the fieldwork of this study has been done under difficult pandemic circumstances. This required a lot of effort and commitment from the organizers, the fieldworkers and the participants, which we acknowledge with gratitude.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)

Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Consumers
  • Cultural identities
  • Meat reduction
  • Social concerns

VU Research Profile

  • Science for Sustainability

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'How meat reduction differs from other personal climate actions: Distinct concerns and cultural barriers among EU consumers'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this