How technological innovation and experience with meat substitutes can trigger social tipping dynamics for food system transformation

There are few areas of consumption that do as much damage to the environment as what we eat. The way we produce food destroys habitats worldwide and contributes to climate change, species extinction and the emergence of pandemics. The food system – especially our appetite for meat – causes up to 37 percent of all global greenhouse gases and plant-based diets could significantly reduce global deforestation and save a good 547 gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2050. This would significantly increase the odds of achieving the Paris climate targets. In other words, changing meat consumption is key for climate change mitigation. While meat consumption in some industrial countries is stagnating at a high level or falling slightly, demand in developing and emerging countries is growing sharply. Deep-rooted eating habits, pleasure, cultural status symbols and personal freedom are just a few of the reasons that reduce the feasibility of changing meat consumption. How can the feasibility of food system transformation be increased? Thus far, we lack knowledge about how technological innovation and behavioral change interact and feed back into the politics of food system transformation. Building on the burgeoning policy feedback and social tipping literature in climate governance and politics, we empirically investigate the mechanisms through which technological innovation in meat replacement production and increased consumer experience with such innovative meat substitutes feeds back into public opinion about meat consumption and food system transformation. In our survey study, we expect that individuals’ personal experience with innovative meat substitutes is a key driver of their behavioral intentions to reduce meat consumption, to accept and endorse emerging social norms and to support policies that help transition towards more plant-based diets. Our argument rests on the premise that individuals’ experience with new meat replacement products positively affects their perceptions of these products, hence countering their perceived utility decrease of reducing meat consumption. This way, technological advance in meat replacement production not only enables diet change among meat eaters, but can also trigger virtuous social norm change and shifts in public opinion about transformative food policies. We test our argument with a survey-embedded framing experiment and a representative sample of 2’590 respondents in China and the US, the two global top meat consumers, fielded in December 2020 and January 2021. Using a Bayesian sparse regression technique, we show that compared to other potential predictors, prior experience with innovative plant-based meat substitutes is the most important predictor for citizens’ perceptions of such products, their intentions to change their food consumption habits, to support transformative food policies and to spread social norms. Moreover, we find that prior experience with innovative meat substitutes can boost the positive effects of informational and social norm campaigns on public support for transformative food policies. Thus, we contribute to climate and food governance research by empirically assessing how technological innovation and experience with meat substitutes can trigger social tipping dynamics for food system transformation.