Consumer acceptance of meat substitutes : The roles of product, context and consumer characteristics

Abstract

here focused mainly on product properties and contextual factors and the other project had an emphasis on consumers and the process of substitution (Hoek, 2010).In this thesis, the term 'Novel Protein Foods' is not used; 'meat substitutes' is used instead, which are products that have been developed to substitute meat in a dish. Meat alternatives like fish, cheese, eggs, pulses, nuts etc. are not considered meat substitutes. Terms that are often found in literature as synonyms for meat substitutes are: meat alternatives, meat analogs, meat replacements, mock meat, and novel protein foods. Appropriateness can be defined as 'how well a product fits in a context, where context can be a usage situation or a meal.The studies described in this thesis were all performed in the Netherlands. The type of meals that are consumed and the acceptance of food are culture-dependent, thus varying between countries. Therefore, we focused on the Netherlands. The goal of this research is to investigate which factors play a role in achieving the societal goal to reduce meat consumption. We therefore first focused only on meat-eaters, but in the study described in Chapters 5 and 6 also vegetarian and vegan respondents were included in the research. This was to study the difference in perceived appropriateness of meat substitutes between these groups of consumers.Furthermore, only meat substitutes used in the hot meal were part of our research. Most of the meat consumption takes place during the hot meal (RIVM, 2020). Therefore, sandwich toppings and snacks were not part of our focus.